Ottawa Senators @ Toronto Maple Leafs
07:00 PM at Scotiabank Arena
Watch on: SN, CBC, CITY, TVAS

The Leafs last game was at home on December 23 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, which Toronto won by a score of 6-3 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 16-15-5 for a 0.514 Points %.

The Ottawa Senators last played at home on December 23 against the Buffalo Sabres. The Senators lost by a score of 3-2 in overtime, and their current league record is 18-13-5 for a 0.569 Points %.

Them

Since they only just made the playoffs last year, Ottawa gets cut a lot of slack for a season not drastically different to the Leafs so far. But they haven't exactly looked like a team that's taken a big leap forward.

They have very good, as in top five, results at five-on-five in both shots and Expected Goals percentages. Take the lesson that while the correlation between xG and future wins is stronger than any other measure, it's not the entire measure of a team.

Their power play is very bad with a low Expected Goals rate coming from a low shot rate. They've scored well over expected and can tell themselves – or their fans can – that they're just exceptionally good at the things that make you score goals by shooting very little.

Their PK is excellent, truly making the goalies' lives easier, and they have the worst Save % shorthanded in the NHL. They also have the lowest Expected Goals Against rate in the NHL. So about those goalies...

Per Moneypuck, Linus Ullmark is 56 out of 61 goalies with at least 10 games played in Goals Saved Over Expected per 60. He's played 27 games. The backup is worse.

Why the Senators are doing this to themselves is beyond me. Imagine if they weren't so good defensively? Imagine if they didn't have to be. Watching a team with a lot of inexplicable problems like the Leafs sure makes you long for a simple and obvious solution like they have.

Lines

Last Game (2025-12-23) via Daily Faceoff and mostly similar to morning skate. There is some question about Nick Jensen not being at skate – possible travel issues.

Brady Tkachuk - Tim Stützle - Fabian Zetterlund
David Perron - Dylan Cozens - Drake Batherson
Michael Amadio - Ridly Greig - Claude Giroux
Kurtis MacDermid - Stephen Halliday - Nick Cousins

Jake Sanderson - Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot - Jordan Spence
Nikolas Matinpalo - Nick Jensen

Linus Ullmark - confirmed starter
Leevi Meriläinen

Us

The last three games before the break the Leafs' Expected Goals percentages at five-on-five were: 53, 53 and 59. The final game against Pittsburgh was a very good performance. The power play was not good, but not abjectly horrible either, while the PK was much better in the most recent games.

Brandon Carlo is already skating after having a procedure on his foot, but there is no firm timetable for his return. Based on morning skate, the lines below look to be tonight's lineup.

I don't know how I feel about Chris Tanev bumping Troy Stecher off of the McCabe pairing. That almost sounds ridiculous, but Stecher and McCabe are at 57% on-ice xG, and are 19th in the NHL for defence pairs with at least 100 minutes. Defence has been hard to come by on the Leafs, and they've been outstanding.

We shall see the new power play tonight. That first unit says to me it's all about puck movement. The second unit says it's all about Nick Robertson's shot. In his junior days, he got a lot of power play points because they did indeed run it to get him the puck. Once year his coach moved him off the prime shooting location and the entire unit failed to get any meaningful shots. It was such a stark difference, it affected his and SDA's total points and led to points-analyzers coming to the wrong conclusion about both of them.

Lines

David Alter via Daily Faceoff

Bobby McMann - Auston Matthews - Max Domi
Matias Maccelli - John Tavares - William Nylander
Matthew Knies - Nicolas Roy - Nicholas Robertson
Dakota Joshua - Scott Laughton - Steven Lorentz

Morgan Rielly - Philippe Myers
Jake McCabe - Chris Tanev
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Troy Stecher

Joe Woll - starter
Dennis Hildeby

The Game

More of the same from the last three games, that's what we need.

Game Coverage