Los Angeles Kings @ Toronto Maple Leafs
07:30 PM at Scotiabank Arena
Watch on: SN, TVAS, BSW

Note the start time.

The Leafs last game was at home on October 12 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, which Toronto won by a score of 4-2 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 2-1-0 for a 0.667 Points %.

The Los Angeles Kings last played away on October 14 against the Ottawa Senators. The Kings lost by a score of 8-7 in overtime, and their current league record is 1-0-2 for a 0.667 Points %.

Them

If you look at the score of that game against Ottawa and assume the Kings were bad, and got a lucky win, so they'll tighten up and play great tonight... well, kind of. The game was very tight until the third period, when Ottawa definitely played better, but LA scored three goals to Ottawa's two. The game was really a reverse goalie duel, with both Ottawa goalies registering -5 Goals Saved Above Expected per 60 minutes, with the Kings goalie hitting -4.5. (Natural Stat Trick's model)

LA did not play fabulously in that situation and they suffered their second straight road overtime loss.

The big story with LA is the loss of Drew Doughty, and I'll be honest, I don't know who Jordan Spence is who played 1RD last game.

Turns out he is 23, was taken 94th overall in 2019, was born in Australia and has been playing some NHL games since 2021-2022. He played 71 games last year, and HockeyViz rates him as a good second pairing defender. So that was a good draft win, but they're relying pretty hard on defence by committee here with a group of second- and third-pairing level defenders and 21-year-old Brandt Clarke not ready yet for the role he has to take on.

Lines

Last Game (2024-10-14) via Daily Faceoff

Alex Laferriere - Anze Kopitar - Adrian Kempe
Tanner Jeannot - Phillip Danault - Trevor Moore
Kevin Fiala - Quinton Byfield - Warren Foegele
Andre Lee - Alex Turcotte - Trevor Lewis

Mikey Anderson - Jordan Spence
Joel Edmundson - Brandt Clarke
Vladislav Gavrikov - Kyle Burroughs

Darcy Kuemper - assumed starter
David Rittich
Pheonix Copley

Us

It's William Nylander's turn to have the 'flu, with John Tavares returning.

This is playing a little havoc with work on the power play, where the revolutionary idea has been to replace Morgan Rielly with Oliver Ekman-Larsson. No one has ever tried this before.

The weakness of the second unit is just to be expected given the mix of skills in the forwards. The trouble on the first unit looks like players who are trying to count out the steps of a dance in their heads. Right, left, right, turn, left and dip, er shoot! There has been a lot of Mitch Marner retrieving the puck from an errant pass to get things started again. He'd like to spend his time setting up shooters instead.

It's a lot more tolerable to see this level of uncertainty on the ice now as opposed to leading into the playoffs like last year where a dry spell spiralled out of control until the good early efforts against Boston faded to a major weakness. It's hard not to try to overcorrect something like a power play when it doesn't immediately yield results, and I think that's exactly what the Leafs did. Between not scoring and Mitch Marner's injury they tried to reinvent the wheel and by the end of the regular season it was a "don't think about elephants" situation and everyone started to get worse.

Lines

Mark Masters via Daily Faceoff from yesterday's practice, which will get rearranged if Nylander can play, he is officially a game-time decision.

Matthew Knies - Auston Matthews - Mitch Marner
Pontus Holmberg - John Tavares - Nicholas Robertson
Bobby McMann - Max Domi - Max Pacioretty
Steven Lorentz - David Kämpf - Ryan Reaves

Morgan Rielly - Chris Tanev
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Jake McCabe
Simon Benoit - Timothy Liljegren

Anthony Stolarz - starter
Dennis Hildeby

The Game

The Kings win on centre depth, the Leafs on defence (an amazing statement to make) and the Leafs, naturally, have more offensive skill. The nod should go to Stolarz as the better goalie, but you never know with those guys.

The Leafs are the heavy favourites to win, but hockey doesn't come with guarantees.

What I'm looking for is an uptick in the five-on-five pace, and a little less confusion about which foot goes where.

Game Coverage