Who: Toronto Maple Leafs (10-7-2; 22 points; 6th in East) vs. Washington Capitals (10-6-1; 21 points; 3rd in East)
What: Game #20 of the 2011-12 Maple Leafs Infirmary Tour
Where: The St. Michael's Hospital Hockey Wing
When: 7pm on CBC HNIC; CSN-MA (DC local); Centre Ice; Gamecenter; other totally not illegal streams
Why: Because the hockey gods are sick, sadistic bastards who haven't yet punished us enough for being fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The old adage goes, "It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." Replace 'loved' with 'won hockey games', and 'lost' with 'lost hockey games'. Truer words have never been spoken, aside from the following;
"Our power play, especially the first unit, is scary-dangerous right now," coach Ron Wilson said. "And they've been good against regular penalty killers" - 10/3/11
Wait, that doesn't sound right. Any who, while the Leafs are going down faster than a stack of hot wings in front of Bruce Boudreau, their early season play is keeping the S.S. Brian Burke Titanic afloat, but just barely. Currently the Leafs are on a 95 point pace, though that's obvious biased due to their 1-4-1 record over the last 6 games. Regardless of winning and losing streaks however, if the Leafs don't right the ship soon (and get healthy) the season could very be be a loss before New Year's.
More on tonight's game after the jump.
via
Joe colborne gets the callup for tonight's game against washington.
Though as others have reported, Colborne did not participate in the morning skate. This, more than likely, is due to his playing for the Marlies last night in a win over Rochester. Which brings up an interesting point, if the plan was to call up Colborne for injury replacement (as was known Friday morning) why was he allowed to play for the Marlies last night to begin with? Grabbo is out for two weeks, Lombardi for three. Joe is coming back from an injury himself and by Sunday will have played 3 games in 3 nights, though only 2 games truly matter. What is Burke's reasoning behind this? Perhaps to see whether or not Colborne's injury wouldn't hamper him Friday night? Regardless, 3 games in 3 nights in a bit ridiculous.
Looking at the other side of the red line, I found something peculiar. I wanted to look up Alex Ovechkin's stats, but he doesn't show up on the first page on NHL.com. Surely that's a mistake right? I mean I see Phil Kessel, Joffrey Lupul, and Ovie's linemate Niklas Backstrom......but where's Ovie? Hopefully the webmasters at the NHL correct this obvious computing error.
I'm going to make a most assuredly vain attempt at guessing the lines for tonight's game because coach Tom Dickson Ron Wilson has the puree button held down for the roster. These probably won't be the lines we see, but they're the lines I'd like to see.:
Lupul - Connolly - Kessel
Kulemin - Colborne - Crabb
Frattin - Bozak - Dupuis
Rosehill-Steckel-Orr
Phaneuf-Gunnarsson
Gardiner-Schenn
Liles-Franson
IR: Reimer, Armstrong, Grabovski, MacArthur, Komisarek, Lombardi. Brown - $19.7M; 31% of the salary cap.
As for the goalie situation, well:
Jonas Gustavsson in the home net this morning. Await confirmation but looks to be starter tonight.
Doesn't Wilson understand that the next game is Scrivens' hot game? Ooof.
