Florida Panthers at Toronto Maple Leafs
Since the Christmas break, the Florida Panthers are 4-3-1 on the road despite the thrashing handed down to them by the Boston Bruins on Tuesday night. A minor miracle did occur for the Panthers though, as their power play clicked for the first time in exactly one calendar month. Things like this have a tendency to occur in spurts and not sustain itself evenly for a long period, so don’t be surprised if the Panthers manage to get on a small roll with their power play especially considering they’re playing one of the two teams with a worse penalty kill efficiency than them (77.7-percent to 77.1-percent for Toronto).
The Leafs are a minor miracle themselves. It’s quite something to watch one of the worst defensive teams in the history of the NHL consistently win games but when you can consistently get 35 saves a night from your goaltenders, that can happen. They have had help from their power play of late, though, with 10 power play goals in January (though they have given up 11 such goals against, that’s not much of a worry against Florida…….. well maybe it is).
These two teams met back in the middle of December on a Tuesday night in Toronto with the Panthers coming away with a 3-1 win. I anticipate more of the same tonight; Florida is a decent even strength team and the Leafs are terrible in such situations. Whatever Toronto might be able to make up with their power play could easily be lost with awful even strength play. I do anticipate this being a low-scoring game though, so the best play might be Scott Clemmensen in net (though that is fairly risky).
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Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
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Scottie Upshall |
Joffrey Lupul |
Scott Gomez |
(FLA) |
(TOR) $5429 |
