Philadelphia Flyers @ Toronto Maple Leafs
07:00 PM at Scotiabank Arena
Watch on: SNO, NBCSP

The Leafs last game was at home yesterday against the Boston Bruins, which Toronto won by a score of 6-4 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 25-13-2 for a 0.650 Points %.

The Philadelphia Flyers last played away on January 2 against the Vegas Golden Knights. The Flyers lost by a score of 5-2 in regulation, and their current league record is 17-18-4 for a 0.487 Points %.

Them

I realized when I saw the lines below that I know nothing about this team or who is on it. Ryan Poehling is the 3C? I have a fondness for him, because he came up in the draft in a season where I was doing a lot of the coverage of potential picks. He had a very interesting hockey career that seemed like he might be a hidden gem. Toronto took Timothy Liljegren and Montréal took Poehling eight spots later. Poehling was a full-time NCAA player when he was drafted, but you could make a story that his two older brothers on the team was why he was there. But there seemed to be a hockey player there in his light usage, but it's taken him a few years and a few teams to really find it in the NHL. He's just barely a 3C on a team with very good top-six centres, which is not the Flyers.

The Flyers have an appalling Corsi %, one of the eight teams worse than the Leafs. Both teams shoot up the rankings when you look at Expected Goals %, but the Flyers really, um, fly. They are seventh, the Leafs only make it to mediocrity. They get extremely poor goaltending and have the worst Save % in the NHL. I find this bizarre, because the metro is so weak on the bottom end, if they got even an average goalie they could rise up and knock the Bruins out of the wild card spot. Where are their priorities?

Using Moneypuck's Goals Saved Above Expected per 60, I find they have three goalies in the bottom 12 out of 60 in total. That's not really something you just hope fixes itself. Of course this could be a soft tank.

That kind of extremely good xG based on extremely poor Corsi can be an illusion on a team where any opponent is guaranteed some goals, and the shooters are not very talented.

Lines

Last Game (2025-01-02) via Daily Faceoff

Scott Laughton - Morgan Frost - Matvei Michkov
Tyson Foerster - Noah Cates - Bobby Brink
Owen Tippett - Ryan Poehling - Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee - Sean Couturier - Garnet Hathaway

Travis Sanheim - Cam York
Egor Zamula - Rasmus Ristolainen
Nick Seeler - Jamie Drysdale

Aleksei Kolosov
Ivan Fedotov - starter

Us

It's Hildebeast time.

Other than that, there are no announced changes to the lineup.

Lines

David Alter via Daily Faceoff

Matthew Knies - Auston Matthews - Mitch Marner
Max Pacioretty - John Tavares - William Nylander
Bobby McMann - Max Domi - Nicholas Robertson
Steven Lorentz - David Kämpf - Connor Dewar

Jake McCabe - Chris Tanev
Morgan Rielly - Philippe Myers
Simon Benoit - Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Dennis Hildeby - starter
Joe Woll

The Game

The Leafs need to take what they did in the first period last game, tighten it up a little and they'll be fine.

Game Coverage