Toronto Maple Leafs @ St. Louis Blues
07:00 PM at Enterprise Center
Watch on: SN, CBC, FDSNMW, KMOV-TV, Matrix-MW

This is Game 74

The Leafs last game was at home on March 25 against the New York Rangers, which Toronto won by a score of 4-3 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 31-29-13 for a 0.514 Points %.

The St. Louis Blues last played at home on March 26 against the San Jose Sharks. The Blues won by a score of 2-1 in overtime, and their current league record is 30-30-11 for a 0.500 Points %.

St. Louis is the fifth to last team in the standings today. If they continue at their current points rate, they will finish with 82 points. If the Leafs continue at their pace, they will finish with 84 points. That seems like an easily covered gap, but the reality is, of course, that neither team is likely to continue at their current full-season pace. The difference is four points, not two, But St. Louis has two more games left to play than the Leafs.

The difficulty is not the Blues, and so all the talk tonight about a "must lose game" won't just be wrong, it'll be extremely misleading. There are four teams in the standings between the Leafs and the Blues, and none of them have any honest pretensions of trying to make the playoffs.

The Leafs have to play at 0.333 to get to 81 points on the season, which is only bad enough if St. Louis keeps winning and everyone else joins in. The Leafs are at 0.375 since the Olympics.

Los Angeles is the third-place team contesting for the two western wild card spots. Nashville holds the second spot with a Points % of 0.535. Los Angeles has a Points % of 0.528, and to overtake Nashville's 88 points (rounded up), they need to play at 0.550 over their remaining 11 games.

LA has won a pair of games and is now one point behind Nashville. San Jose, six points back, is almost certainly out of the picture, and due to the weird standings is one of the teams between Toronto and the Blues. Seattle is a still a plausible option three points back, but at this point in the season moving that much is very, very unlikely.

Them

This team has some really good players, and they almost never win anything.

They also can't rip it all down because, like every other team in the NHL that hasn't been bad for years, they have players with trade protection.

Lines

Projected lineup:

Dylan Holloway - Robert Thomas - Jimmy Snuggerud
Jake Neighbours - Pavel Buchnevich - Jordan Kyrou
Otto Stenberg - Dalibor Dvorsky - Jonatan Berggren
Alexey Toropchenko - Jack Finley - Pius Suter

Philip Broberg - Logan Mailloux
Theo Lindstein - Colton Parayko
Cam Fowler - Justin Holl

Joel Hofer
Jordan Binnington - confirmed starter

Us

This team has some really good players, and they almost never win anything.

They also can't rip it all down because, like every other team in the NHL that hasn't been bad for years, they have players with trade protection.

If you missed it yesterday, the Leafs chose to send Bo Groulx back to the Marlies before his waiver exemption expired. Otherwise they would have had to put him through waivers at the end of the NHL season so he could play in the AHL playoffs.

The risk of a claim is not high, but it's also not zero because he is under contract next year for a low AAV and he just performed like a potential NHL depth player.

Prioritizing him in the AHL playoffs over a handful of NHL games is the right call for the short term. However, Groulx will need to clear waivers next season at the end of training camp if he does not make the NHL. What the Leafs are doing is preserving their certainty that they will have training camp to determine if he's on the roster or not next year.

Lines

Nick Barden via Daily Faceoff

Easton Cowan - John Tavares - William Nylander
Matthew Knies - Max Domi - Nicholas Robertson
Dakota Joshua - Steven Lorentz - Matias Maccelli
Michael Pezzetta - Jacob Quillan - Calle Järnkrok

Morgan Rielly - Brandon Carlo
Jake McCabe - Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Simon Benoit - Troy Stecher

Anthony Stolarz
Joe Woll - confirmed starter

The Game

Sure, give that a go.

Game Coverage