Tonight the Red Wings and Maple Leafs square off in the second game of a home-and-home series. Last night, icing their top three lines and top four defenseman, the Red Wings played their style of hockey on the way to a 7-3 victory against a nearly-equally stacked roster for the Leafs in terms of NHL-ready players. Tonight is the last preseason game of the season for the Leafs and head coach Ron Wilson says he’d like to have the lineup tonight that he’s planning to use opening night against Montreal this coming Thursday. Luke Schenn is expected to Toronto’s lineup after missing the last several preseason games with back troubles following a particularly rough shift against Ottawa in Toronto’s preseason opener.
Babcock’s Red Wings finish out the preseason tomorrow night at home against Pittsburgh. Detroit’s challenge tonight will be to control the pace of the game. The Leafs will want to use this as their full dress rehearsal, so Detroit will less likely be able to thrive in the fast-paced up and down action featured last night. The roster tonight, per Ansar Khan features no players slated higher than fourth line or third defensive pairing duties save for Jimmy Howard in net, who Babcock wants tested tonight. Here are the lines:
Drew Miller-Justin Abdelkader-Mattias Ritola
Kirk Maltby-Darren Helm-Willie Coetzee
Jordan Owens-Cory Emmerton-Jan Mursak
Tomas Tatar-Joakim Andersson-Francis Pare or Jamie Tardif
Jonathan Ericsson-Jakub Kindl
Brian Lashoff-Ruslan Salei
Doug Janik-Brendan Smith or Logan Pyett
Updated at 4:30 pm CDT: Per Sportsnet, the Leafs are going with essentially their opening-night lineup. Their lines are projected to look like this:
Kris Versteeg-Tyler Bozak-Phil Kessel
Clarke MacArthur-Mikhail Grabovski-Nikolai Kulemin
Fredrik Sjostrom-Tim Brent-Colby Armstrong
Mike Brown-Christian Hanson-Colton Orr
Dion Phaneuf-Francois Beauchemin
Tomas Kaberle-Mike Komisarek
Luke Schenn-Carl Gunnerson
Jean-Sebastian Giguere
Jonas Gustavsson
It should be interesting to see a bunch of guys headed to the AHL playing against a bunch of guys who should be playing in the NHL. Let’s get this thread going.
