Toronto Maple Leafs @ Ottawa Senators
07:00 PM at Canadian Tire Centre
Watch on: SN, CBC, TVAS2

The Leafs last game was at home on March 20 against the Carolina Hurricanes, which Toronto lost by a score of 4-3 in overtime. The Leafs have a record of 29-28-13 for a 0.507 Points %.

The Ottawa Senators last played at home on March 19 against the New York Islanders. The Senators won by a score of 3-2 in regulation, and their current league record is 35-24-9 for a 0.581 Points %.

St. Louis is the fifth to last team in the standings today with a Points % of 0.478. If they continue at that points rate, they will finish with 78 points. The Leafs have to finish with 77 points to take that spot in the standings, and they need to play at 0.250 the rest of the season to only get six points out of the remaining 12 games. Their points pace since the Olympics is 0.308.

Los Angeles is the second place team contesting for the two western wild card spots, putting them in a playoff position as of today. This is all unchanged since yesterday.

Them

Ottawa is a good five-on-five team that hits a lot. Their goaltending has sunk their season, and Jake Sanderson out week-to-week with an injury hasn't exactly helped them.

Lines

From morning skate (identical to their last game):

Drake Batherson - Tim Stützle - Claude Giroux
Brady Tkachuk - Dylan Cozens - Ridly Greig
Nick Cousins - Shane Pinto - Michael Amadio
Warren Foegele - Lars Eller - Fabian Zetterlund

Thomas Chabot - Artem Zub
Tyler Kleven - Jordan Spence
Dennis Gilbert - Nikolas Matinpalo

Linus Ullmark - starter
James Reimer

Us

If you're looking for something to watch for in this game, try Easton Cowan.

He looked very active and effective with Auston Matthews, but he's vanished on the Tavares line. Last night's game is tough to use to measure offence because no one shot the puck much, but in 12 minutes at five-on-five, Cowan shot the puck twice, got one Shot on Goal out of it, and took a penalty in the third while the team was down by one goal.

On the Leafs, Max Domi and Bobby McMann are the only forwards with more PIM than Cowan. The London Knights were so good, so dominant and had such good goaltending that "chasing the play" penalties like last night's tripping call just didn't need to be an issue. So far in the NHL, Cowan hasn't shaken this method of dealing with adversity.

Top line players like Matt Knies take penalties, in part, because they are naturally going to be defending against other top lines quite a lot more than a fourth liner (in terms of minutes played). They will need to pass the defending over to the PK unit some of the time. One of the questions with Cowan is going to be: does he need to do that so much, he stops being useful on the top lines?

The Leafs have one defender, Phil Myers, and one forward, Michael Pezzetta, they can cycle in, should they choose.

Lines

Dave McCarthy via Daily Faceoff from last night.

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

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

Anthony Stolarz - starter
Joe Woll

The Game

I expect Ottawa to be more motivated than Carolina was last night. Other than that, hockey remains unpredictable. Bet on it.

Game Coverage