The Panthers closed the gap last night. The Leafs aren’t looking good and have a much tougher schedule over the next six weeks. It will be interesting.

As for Pittsburgh they are 7-2-1 in their last 10, and have generally been good beyond those 10 games as well. Joy.

Here are five things to watch for…

Pass. There’s no controversy, Jack Campbell is shiny and new, better lately, and isn’t recovering from a neck injury. He should probably play a fair bit over the next few weeks. Now that the requisite praise of Campbell is done, the Leafs need Andersen to get back to the level he can play at because ultimately he is the better goaltender, and the one the Leafs (likely) need to get them through to the playoffs and beyond.

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have made careers out of carrying bad wingers around. To some extent that was Tavares’ life before Toronto as well, and perhaps that something to consider for the Leafs heading into the trade deadline. Assuming the foundation of Nylander, Marner, and Hyman remains intact on the wing, wouldn’t it be nice to explore what the Leafs can do with Kerfoot and/or Kapanen in the coming days?

As someone who will never stop banging the trade Kapanen, Kerfoot, and Johnsson drums, the potential rise of another affordable Marlies option to bottom six is a beautiful thing. Korshkov has the potential to be a Pierre Engvall lite, and heck, even a full blown Engvall, I’m not calling it after one game, but Engvall’s AHL track record was better. He brings a lot of characteristics the Leafs can use to their roster, and with a price tag that warms my heart. Hopefully the trade off for the Leafs season of injuries will be the continued success of their callups.

Perhaps we’re just at the point where we’ve talked ourselves into believing every no name Leaf is something special (see point #3 above) and the Leafs roster truly looks worse than the bottom part of the Pens lineup. Still, we spend a lot of time using Matthews, Tavares, and Marner’s names in the same breath as players like Crosby and Malkin, or McDavid and Draisaitl, and they’ve seemingly been able to carry teams with far worse supporting casts.

This isn’t an argument that Matthews and Tavares need to give more, and really it’s not an argument for Marner or Nylander to do that either, it’s just a general level of confusion about why a Marcus Pettersson and Justin Schultz defensive pairing is getting it done when a Dermott/Barrie isn’t.

The answer is probably goaltending, right? It’s always goaltending.

As of right now it looks like both will play, but nothing about Sunday’s game should have us feeling confident that either are at 100%. I hate to say the name Martin Marincin, because it’s never received well on the internet, but perhaps it’s time to give Marincin a game and let Sandin sit. Potentially Marincin can eat a few more minutes than Sandin does as well, which could bail out Muzzin in addition to Sandin on the health front.