LGD: Big and Bad

Leo Komarov and Jonathan Bernier should make their return to the lineup tonight as the Leafs continue this nightmare of a road trip into Boston. 

It’ll be the third time the teams meet this season, after splitting the previous two outings. The Leafs were embarrassed at home in October before dumping the Bruins in November, the latter of which was arguably their best effort of the entire season.

Heading into the new year, both teams are basically right on the dotted line for playoff contention, with the Leafs tumbling recently but clinging to a wild card spot, while Boston is looking to break in and bump them out. It looks like it’s been a weird season for the Bruins so far as they’ve been hanging around ninth in the conference for a while, which I guess is partly due to Rask being somewhat human (.911 sv%). Either way, they’re always a dangerous team, and remain in the top half of the league in terms of possession (51.4% CF at evens) so I still expect them to be in the playoffs in April. 

Phaneuf – Franson

Gardiner – Polak

Rielly – Holzer

These lines will change if the Corporal is good to go, likely with Ashton being taken out. But Komarov still needs doctor’s clearance, so we’ll see what happens. 

If he gets the green light, we could see something like this, according to Siegel:

Maybe I should have just put a question mark in this section and left it at that. Everyone will probably be too drunk to care anyway. Happy New Year!

Marchand – Krejci – Smith

Kelly – Soderberg – Eriksson

Paille – Campbell – Caron

Lindblad – Cunningham – Griffith

Chara – Hamilton

Bartkowski – Seidenberg

Krug – Miller

This lineup could change substantially, as it appears Lucic and Bergeron will be game-time decisions after practicing with the team yesterday. Both missed the Bruins’ win against the Wings on Monday.

Let’s end this off with some words of wisdom from my main man JB. He might not know who Nelson Mandela was, but he understands how you win hockey games.