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Gameday: Capital of the NHL vs the Capitals

Unlike the Sabres, the Leafs CAN beat Washington.

NHL: FEB 28 Maple Leafs at Capitals Photo by Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Washington Capitals
7:00PM - Scotiabank Arena
Theme: Pride Night!
All time record vs Washington: 64-71-10-5
TSN4, TVA Sports, NBC Sports Washington
Other Guys: Japers Rink

Tuesday night was a disaster. Just awful. However, that was against the Buffalo Sabres. Tonight, the Maple Leafs play a playoff bound team and they are on top of their game against teams who are heading to the post-season.

These two teams last met on February 28th and the Maple Leafs ran away with a 5-3 victory.

Them

The Capitals are the bottom Wild Card team in the Eastern Conference, but are basically guaranteed a playoff spot as they are 15 points ahead of the Long Island Islanders, and only three points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins for the third seed in the Metro Division.

They’re on a four game win streak, beating the Flyers, Bruins, Lightning, and Penguins, and have only lost once in April, 5-1 to the Minnesota Wild. They’re coming into Toronto fresh off a 9-2 blowout of the Philadelphia Flyers, so hopefully they scored so many goals on Tuesday that they have none left for tongiht.

Lines

Alexander Ovechkin - Evgeny Kuznetsov* - Conor Sheary
Marcus Johansson - Nicklas Backstrom - TJ Oshie
Anthony Mantha - Lars Eller - Tom Wilson
Johan Larsson - Nic Dowd - Garnet Hathaway

Martin Fehervary - John Carlson
Trevor van Riemsdyk - Nick Jensen
Matt Irwin - Justin Schultz

Ilya Samsonov
Vitek Vanecek

*Kuznetsov is a game time decision.

Injuries: Carl Hagelin, Joe Snively, Dmitri Orlov

No former Leafs on the roster tonight.

Us

The Maple Leafs are great, we all know that. I say that every time. And, as I said above, they’re playing a quality opponent so the odds are we should get a quality game out of them. No big news out of practice today.

Lines

Michael Bunting - Auston Matthews - Mitch Marner
Ilya Mikheyev - John Tavares - Alexander Kerfoot
William Nylander - David Kämpf - Pierre Engvall
Kyle Clifford - Colin Blackwell - Wayne Simmonds

Morgan Rielly - Ilya Lyubushkin
TJ Brodie - Jake Muzzin
Mark Giordano - Timothy Liljegren

Jack Campbell
Erik Källgren

Injuries: Ondřej Kaše, Petr Mrázek, Rasmus Sandin

A table, with numbers!

Preview Stats

Toronto Team Tampa
Toronto Team Tampa
3-3 Series 3-3
23GF - 21GA - +2 Goal Differential 21GF - 23GA - -2
16% - 11th Power Play 22.6% - 7th
77.4% - 10th Penalty Kill 84% - 6th
Auston Matthews - 4 Most Goals Colton, Palat - 3
Mitch Marner - 5 Most Assists Nikita Kucherov - 6
Auston Matthews - 8 Most Points Nikita Kucherov - 8
Ilya Lyubushkin - 18 Most PM Jan Rutta - 17
TJ Brodie - 22:44 TOI Leader Victor Hedman - 25:45
Jack Campbell - .893sv% Starting Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy - .885sv%

Obligatory Gambling Section

Don’t do it out of spite for how annoying all the websites are.

The game is at 7 tonight!

Go Leafs Go!