Puck Drop: 7PM TSN
After giving the Florida Panthers the old rope-a-dope again last night the Leafs travel to the only "City of Brotherly Love" where people hit each other in the head with glass bottles while celebrating. In fact smashing your Eagles 2004 Super Bowl runner up commemorative plate over someone's head is affectionately referred to as the Philadelphia Hello. Go Flyers!!1
The Flyers are only 2 points ahead of the Leafs right now, though that's misleading because Philly has two games in hand. The NHL doesn't take that into account yet in the standings though and personally I'm ok with saying we're only two points back.
Philly's been having a rough season and though my gut feeling was that they were snapping out of their slump the Broad Street Babies are 4-4-2 in their last ten but 4-1-1 on their six game road trip. I guess, like everyone else, the Flyers don't like to be around people from Philadelphia. (Apologies for the name calling readers but Flyers fans might miss more cerebral jokes and if we're not trying to rile them up I fear all may already be lost.)
In goal for the Flyers is Michael Leighton from Petrolia Ontario, a town I imagine is sponsored by either Exxon or Shell, who lasted a whopping nine minutes in his last start against the Ottawa Senators, a goal scoring powerhouse currently sitting in 13th in goals scored per game. Uh oh. Of note is that Leighton's .891 save percentage ranks him 2 places ahead of Vesa Toskala.
Jonas ".908" Gustavsson should get the nod in net tonight because at this point if we wanted to give him a rest we might as well forfeit. Despite allowing two early goals to Bryan fucking McCabe last night once that unpleasantness was over he informed the team that he was shutting the door. I don't know how to say that in Swedish but I assume it involved umlauts and that letter 'o' with a slash through it.
Mike Komisarek remains out but Luke Schenn stepped up and played almost 20 minutes last night blocking three shots and ending up a +1 in a close game. It was a strong game for Schenn who's been playing well as of late and he'll need to build on these performances to continue getting big minutes.
Let's cross our fingers for some Hagman and Kessel production which has been missing as of late, don't forget your SPG picks and go Leafs go!
