Preview: Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Philadelphia Flyers

Toronto Maple Leafs at Philadelphia Flyers: 7:00pm

Watch on: CBC

Opponent’s site: Broad Street Hockey

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be facing the Philadelphia Flyers again on Hockey Night in Canada. This is their second time playing the Flyers within a week, having narrowly beat the Flyers last weekend in a shootout that lasted approximately a hundred years. Since then, they’ve beaten both the LA Kings and the Vegas Golden Knights, giving them their first three-game win streak of the year.

After a fairly shaky October, the November version of the Leafs have been looking more like the creative, high-offence team we know and love – helped by the fact that November Freddie has officially arrived, and arrived with style. He made some crazy saves against Vegas Thursday night, and was no small part of the team winning it in OT. Helping this is the fact that John Tavares seems to be fully recovered from his broken finger, if his beautiful game-winning-goal (off of a Mitch Marner pass, of course) is anything to go by.

Post-game, both Freddie and Mitch shouted out the team’s Halloween party, held right before their current win streak started, for helping the team bond. They both also mentioned their upcoming road trip as another chance to get to know each other better. Babcock echoed this sentiment, crediting the team getting to know each other more (and chirping each other more) for the way they’ve look more relaxed on the ice – and less married to the set play. This is something that the powerplay in particular was sorely in need of (they’re currently 3/33 in their last ten games played). For one of the best offensive teams in the league, that creativity is their greatest strength, and getting more mobile on the powerplay will only ever lead to good things.

Auston Matthews on PP breaking through, finally:

" ... Different guys going into different areas & just reacting & playing off our instincts, not just drawing up plays, but reacting off one another & using each other & just making plays, spread them out a little bit ..."

— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) November 8, 2019

Maple Leafs Lines
(From morning skate, as reported by Kristen Shilton)

Forwards
Trevor Moore - John Tavares - Mitch Marner
Andreas Johnsson - Auston Matthews - William Nylander
Ilya Mikheyev - Alexander Kerfoot - Kasperi Kapanen
Dmytro Timashov - Nick Shore - Frederik Gauthier
Injured: Zach Hyman
Scratched: Jason Spezza

Defensemen
Morgan Rielly - Cody Ceci
Jake Muzzin - Tyson Barrie
Travis Dermott - Justin Holl
Scratched: Martin Marincin

Goaltenders
Frederik Andersen
Michael Hutchinson

Philadelphia Flyers Lines
(Based on lines against Montreal Canadiens)

Forwards
James Van Riemsdyk – Claude Giroux – Joel Farabee
Oskar Lindblom – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny
Carsen Twarynski – Kevin Hayes – Jakub Voracek
Michael Raffl – Mikhail Vorobyov – Tyler Pitlick

Defensemen
Ivan Provorov – Matt Niskanen
Shayne Gostisbehere – Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim – Philippe Myers

Goaltenders
Brian Elliott (starting)
Carter Hart

And finally, something to tug on your heartstrings:

Remember the 11-year-old from Newfoundland who had a birthday party but nobody showed up? The Leafs have Kade Foster and his family here today for the game. He’s meeting some of the Leafs players now as we speak. pic.twitter.com/jsrynNGgdf

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) November 9, 2019

Go Leafs go – do it for Kade!