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LGD: Home game in Buffalo

By Adam Laskaris

Mar 25, 2017, 13:47 EDTUpdated: Mar 25, 2017, 13:48 EDT

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Photo Credit: Kevin Hoffman/USA TODAY SPORTS

The Leafs head on the road for a home game in Buffalo tonight, in what’s not necessarily a must-win but definitely a should-win and more accurately would-be-very-nice-to-win.

The Sabres are kind of a funny team, in that they haven’t won a playoff series since 2007 (and haven’t been in the playoffs since 2011), yet don’t seem a whole lot closer than last season, where they finished with 81 points. They currently have 72. They’ve yet to see the emergence of the final piece of their young three (in Nylander Jr.), but are definitely at the getting-fans-and-media-getting-restless point of their rebuild.

Probably my favourite fun fact about this rivalry is that the Leafs drafted Auston Matthews in Buffalo!

The unfortunate thing though is that as much fun as it is to laugh at Buffalo’s missteps, there’s still a very real task the Leafs have ahead of them. With both Tampa Bay and the New York Islanders stepping up last night and earning wins, Toronto needs to come out from tonight with two points if they’re looking to create some space in the standings. Hey, nobody said this was going to be easy!

The Leafs

LW	C	RW
Zach Hyman	Auston Matthews	William Nylander
Leo Komarov	Nazem Kadri	Connor Brown
James van Riemsdyk	Tyler Bozak	Mitchell Marner
Matt Martin	Brian Boyle	Ben Smith

Defensive Pairings
Morgan Rielly	Connor Carrick
Jake Gardiner	Nikita Zaitsev
Matt Hunwick	Alexey Marchenko

Ben Smith! A second straight game without Roman Polak! What a lineup! Anything is possible! (Leivo and Soshnikov are both out tonight.)

The Sabres

LW	C	RW
Tyler Ennis	Ryan O’Reilly	Kyle Okposo
Marcus Foligno	Jack Eichel	Sam Reinhart
Evander Kane	Evan Rodrigues	Brian Gionta
Will Carrier	Zemgus Girgensons	Matt Moulson

Defensive Pairings
Zach Bogosian	Jake McCabe
Josh Gorges	Justin Falk
Brady Austin	Dmitry Kulikov

Evan Rodrigues is a Toronto native, so expect that to be a major story line tonight.

Some other points of note:

Hey, remember when Josh Gorges refused a trade to Toronto? (For his injured teammate Cody Franson)
Tyler Ennis has four goals this season, but is slotted in on the Sabres first line
Jack Eichel has 50 points in 53 games, which is #good.
Brian Gionta is still in the league and will probably hit 35 points this year
Rasmus Ristolainen has a 43.5% CF at 5v5 but might hit 50 points. Impeccable! Amongst defencemen who have played at least 500 minutes this year, he’s allowed shot attempts at the highest rate in the league (65.52/60)

Between the Pipes

Freddy vs. Robin (Lehner) tonight. Andersen carries a .919 save percentage, while Lehner carries a .921 save percentage this season. Even enough matchup.