Bruins Vs. Leafs Preview: Showdown at the ACC

Just the Facts

Game Time: 7:00 PM, Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON. TV Broadcast: New England Sports Network (NESN), CBC, NHL Network. Radio Broadcast: 98.5 The Sports Hub.

Records: Bruins (20-6-3, fourth in the east) vs. Leafs (16-12-3, sixth in the east)

The Other Side's SB Nation Site: Pension Plan Puppets

Get Tickets here: Boston Bruins Tickets

Leafs projected lines:

JVR - Bozak - Kessel
Kulemin - Kadri - MacArthur
Hamilton - Grabovski - Frattin
McLaren - McClement - Orr

Phaneuf - Gunnarsson
Franson - Fraser
Liles - Gardiner

Reimer

Bruins projected lines:

Marchand - Bergeron - Seguin
Lucic - Krejci - Horton
Pandolfo - Peverley - Caron
Paille - Campbell - Thornton

Chara - Ference
Seidenberg - Hamilton
Johnson - Bartkowski

Khudobin

Preview:

The Bruins are 25-5-5 against Toronto dating back to 2007. Let that fun fact sink in a little. Enjoy it. Swish it around a little, savor it.

Done? Ok good.

With only four goals scored in their last three games, the Bruins need to find a spark to ignite the offense - especially in light of their recent defensive woes. Johnny Boychuk was injured in practice yesterday and Matt Bartkowski is filling his role. Hold onto your hats, that third pairing is going to be interesting - by which I mean it might make us yearn for Andrew Ference and Adam McQuaid's pairing. Speaking of Alternate Captain Planet, he looked good paired with Zdeno Chara against Ottawa. Likely we'll see that pairing again tonight.

Ideally it would be great to see Ryan Spooner centering Jordan Caron and Rich Peverley on the third line - Peverley's in tonight. I believe we'll see Jay "I'm a million years old" Pandolfo in though.

Anton Khudobin in net tonight, which is an interesting choice - he played quite well on Thursday, and it'll be cool to see how he does in back to back starts. Any additional rest Tuukka Rask can get out ahead of the playoffs can't be a bad thing.

Let's do this.