After a 8-1 rout of the Tampa Bay Lightning in Marc Savard's return to game action on Thursday night, the Bruins will take on the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight at the Air Canada Centre.
After opening the season in promising fashion with a 4-01 record, Toronto has gone 4-12-3 since. Ron Wilson's team will be looking to snap a four-game losing streak (0-3-1) when they take the ice against the B's tonight while they try to rebound from a 5-0 loss to the lowly Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.
Phil Kessel leads the Leafs with 10 goals. After netting 7 goals in 10 games in October, Phil "Mr. October" Kessel has cooled off as the mercury has started to dip (shocker) and has just 3 goals in his last 14 games. Nikolai Kulemin is right behind Kessel with 9 tallies on the season.
In net, Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Jonas Gustavsson have split time evenly, with both goalies getting 12 starts so far. Giguere is 5-5-2 with a 2.90 GAA and .890 save percentage. Gustavsson is 3-7-2 with a 2.66 GAA and .910 save percentage.
Toronto will be without the services of forwards Mike Brown and Colby Armstrong, who are both dealing with finger injuries and defenseman Dion Phaneuf, who has a deep laceration on his leg.
Notes:
- The Bruins did not hold a full morning skate today, so we will have to wait until game time for the starting goalie and lines.
- According to Joe Haggerty, Claude Julien described the Leafs as a "wounded animal that could be dangerous".
- Toronto is 6-5-3 on home ice at the ACC this season.
- Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson may shuffle his lines tonight and play Phil Kessel at center.
- The Bruins need to take advantage of their chances on the power play. The Leafs have only a 75% success rate on the penalty kill this season.
- One thing that Toronto does well is that they limit the amount of shots that reach their goalie. The Leafs are 5th in the league with 28.1 shots against per game.
- This is the second of four meetings between the Northeast Division rivals. The B's took the first meeting 2-0 on October 28th.
- Mikhail Grobovski, Colton Orr, Luke Schenn, and Joey Crabb (2 games played) are the only Maple Leafs with positive +/- ratings.
- Phil Kessel has recorded one point (an assist) and is minus-6 in 7 career games versus his old team.
- Tuukka Rask is 4-1-0 with a 1.79 GAA and .943 save percentage in 5 career games against the team that drafted him.
- Most sports books have the B's as -150 favorites
- Tonight's game will be on "Hockey Night in Canada" (CBC, NHL Network US). Locally the game will air on NESN. 98.5 The Sports Hub will have the radio call. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00.
- Public Skate open thread gets going at 6:30.
- For more on tonight game from Toronto, checkout Pension Plan Puppets