LGD – Bounce Back Opportunity

After having their six-game winning streak snapped in an ugly loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be looking to bounce back against a slumping yet dangerous Philadelphia Flyers squad.

If the Leafs hope to return to winning ways, the biggest challenge they will face is shutting down the Flyers’ duo of Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux, who sit 3rd and 8th in league scoring respectively. If the Leafs can keep those two off the scoreboard, they’re in for a much easier night. Philadelphia has some nice secondary scoring pieces, but so far this season only seven Flyers have 10 or more points. To compare, the Leafs have 13 players who’ve cracked 10 points.

Looking at the averages, the Leafs certainly score more goals than the Flyers – or anyone for that matter. Toronto leads the league with 3.38 goals-per-game, while Philadelphia ranks 18th with 2.61. On the defensive side of things, it’s even. – both teams give up exactly 2.81 goals-per-game.

During Thursday’s third period, Randy Carlyle shuffled his lines. It’s possible that those changes will carry over to tonight’s contest, with Joffrey Lupul getting promoted to the top line, and James van Riemsdyk moving down to the second. 

There’s also a good chance that Jake Gardiner gets scratched tonight in favour of Roman Polak and/or Korbinian Holzer. Gardiner didn’t look great against the Canes, and simply put, hasn’t been very good so far this season. For now, we’re listing him in the lineup, but we’ll know more later this afternoon.

Joffrey Lupul – Tyler Bozak – Phil Kessel

James Van Hockey – Nazem Kadri – Santa

Daniel Winnik – Peter Holland – David Clarkson

David Booth – Trevor Smith – Richard Panik

Dion Phaneuf – Cody Franson

Jake Gardiner – Roman Polak

Morgan Rielly – Stephane Robidas

There’s no denying that Philadelphia has some very nice hockey players, but wow, there are some things about this lineup that are ugly as heck. Vincent Lecavalier makes $4.5M until 2018 and is currently centreing the fourth line? Gross. And that Andrew MacDonald-Luke Schenn third pairing costs $8.6M? Oh God.

I’m fully aware that Toronto has a number of not-so-hot contracts, but this is some next level stuff right here.

Michael Raffl – Claude Giroux – Jakub Voracek

Good Schenn – Scott Laughton – Wayne Simmonds

R.J. Umberger – Sean Couturier – Matt Read

Trash Rinaldo – Vincent Lecavalier – Pierre-Edouard Bellewho?

Nicklas Grossmann – Mark Streit

Nick Schultz – Braydon Coburn

Andrew MacDonald – Bad Schenn