Toronto Maple Leafs @ Montréal Canadiens
07:00 PM at Centre Bell
Watch on: SN, TVAS

The Leafs last preseason game was at home on October 5 against the Detroit Red Wings, which Toronto won by a score of 3-2 in regulation.

The Montréal Canadiens last played away on October 5 against the Ottawa Senators. The Canadiens lost by a score of 4-2 in regulation.

Them

Both Evolving Hockey and HockeyViz project the Canadiens to be last in the Atlantic. Which of course means they actually have more to play for when they face Toronto than most of the rest of the time.

I mean. Do you want me to answer that?

Lines

Erik Erlendsson via Daily Faceoff from practice, and unchanged at morning skate.

Cole Caufield - Nick Suzuki - Juraj Slafkovský
Alex Newhook - Kirby Dach - Joel Armia
Alex Barré-Boulet - Christian Dvorak - Josh Anderson
Brendan Gallagher - Jake Evans - Emil Heineman

Mike Matheson - Kaiden Guhle
Lane Hutson - David Savard
Arber Xhekaj - Justin Barron

Sam Montembeault - confirmed starter
Cayden Primeau

Us

The Leafs set their opening night roster up on Monday with an eye to maximizing the LTIR pool. They are sitting Bobby McMann in favour of Max Pacioretty – early indications are these two will rotate in on the third line. Timothy Liljegren is also out, and that looks like keeping him out for trade reasons to me, but that's only a guess.

The real question is about goalie health. If you can imagine that happening. Joe Woll was set to be the starter for this game, but there's trouble before the puck even drops on this season.

Dennis Hildeby is in Montréal as well, so he might be backup, but there has been no clarification on the roster adjustment.

Lines

David Alter via Daily Faceoff

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

Morgan Rielly - Chris Tanev
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Jake McCabe
Simon Benoit - Conor Timmins

Joe Woll
Anthony Stolarz - confirmed starter
Dennis Hildeby

The Game

I like the Leafs lineup for the most part – imperfect, but still very, very good. The key is the defence and the defending as a unit. It's not enough to just commit to it, they all need to function in the defensive zone effectively and with an end result of a good transition to offence. That's the only way you get the puck on the right sticks in the right place to get the most goals.

The big opportunity here is for Conor Timmins. I've liked in that flickering on/off way that Robertson has nailed down. Timmins can be extremely useful offensively, and can clearly do some defending, but then he also seems like this is his first game of hockey sometimes. If you only look at him when he's on, you'll wonder why he isn't on the second pair. He needs to make the Leafs not want to put anyone else in that spot.

The goalie situation is exactly as expected.

Game Coverage