Toronto Maple Leafs @ St. Louis Blues
07:00 PM at Enterprise Center
Watch on: SN, CBC, FDSNMW
The Leafs last game was at home on October 31 against the Seattle Kraken, which Toronto won by a score of 4-1 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 6-4-1 for a 0.591 Points %.
The St. Louis Blues last played away on October 31 against the Philadelphia Flyers. The Blues lost by a score of 2-1 in regulation, and their current league record is 5-6-0 for a 0.455 Points %.
Them
Who is this team? The one who rolled Toronto, prevented them from scoring more than one goal or the team that loses to the Flyers?
They are legitimately both. They aren't bad at anything but the power play, and even a bad one scores sometimes, and they aren't really good at anything either. They aren't goalie-ing other teams, they aren't shooting the lights out, they're just kind of there.
But Jake Neighbours and Jordan Kyrou are very good, their bottom six is okay, and if you don't work too hard their defence can cope.
Their win over Toronto was their most decisive of the five they have so far, but they also got gently outplayed. Joe Woll wasn't great in his first start, but the offence Toronto produced against them was weak.
Lines
Lou Korac via Daily Faceoff from yesterday's practice, subject to change as the Blues keep switching up the forward configurations.
Brandon Saad - Pavel Buchnevich - Jake Neighbours
Dylan Holloway - Brayden Schenn - Jordan Kyrou
Alexandre Texier - Nathan Walker - Oskar Sundqvist
Alexey Toropchenko - Radek Faksa - Zack Bolduc
Ryan Suter - Colton Parayko
Philip Broberg - Justin Faulk
Pierre-Olivier Joseph - Matthew Kessel
Jordan Binnington - assumed starter
Joel Hofer
Us
New defender Matt Benning was on the fourth pair in practice, so don't expect to see him in the game.
The practice lines included two choices for the third line winger spot, so that's up in the air, but there doesn't seem to be any move to alter the top six in its new format. The line of Pacioretty-Tavares-Nylander has been extremely good with Tavares clearly playing well with both wingers, gut it's not really plausible that this line will play all 82 games for a lot of minutes. The challenge is to get Nylander on the ice more without overplaying his older linemates.
Ryan Reaves in, so the extra is one of those third-line wingers.
Lines
Mark Masters via Daily Faceoff
Matthew Knies - Auston Matthews - Mitch Marner
Max Pacioretty - John Tavares - William Nylander
Bobby McMann - Max Domi - Pontus Holmberg or Nick Robertson
Steven Lorentz - David Kämpf - Ryan Reaves
Morgan Rielly - Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Jake McCabe - Chris Tanev
Simon Benoit - Conor Timmins
Anthony Stolarz
Joe Woll - hometown starter
The Game
Same as it ever was, outshoot the opponent, shoot smart, play hard, defend the best you can. The bulk of the last game against Seattle was this very thing, but when the team falls back into casual dump outs and useless dump-ins to get a line change, it's impossible to get anything accomplished.
