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The Toronto Maple Leafs continue their five-game road trip with another stop in the Sunshine State, as they take on the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena on Saturday. It is like old home week for the Leafs, who played and lost 3-1 to the Florida Panthers on Thursday, the club that eliminated them in the second round of the playoffs last season.
How many mistakes lead to Florida's first goal of the game yesterday?
— Frank Corrado (@frankcorrado22) October 20, 2023
Multiple.
It doesn't take much to dig the puck out of the back of your net in the best league in the world.@tsnhockey pic.twitter.com/Vv6hVi3dlD
On Saturday, Toronto takes on the team that they eliminated in the first round and advanced past for the first time in 19 seasons. The Lightning still have some excellent players with Cup-winning pedigrees like Victor Hedman, Anthony Cirelli, Brayden Point, Mikhail Sergachev, Nikita Kucherov, and of course Steven Stamkos, but the injury to Andrei Vasilevskiy has revealed that the secondary scoring and lineup depth that allowed Jon Cooper to survive long absences to key players is gone.
Tampa will start Jonas Johansson (2-1-1, 3.53 GAA, .894 Save %) against Toronto, and after missing a couple of games, Stamkos has returned from a lower-body injury.
Tyler Bertuzzi saw a decrease in ice time on Thursday due to dealing with an injury, according to Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe. Bertuzzi said on Friday that he was feeling better and Keefe confirmed that he would be in the lineup on Saturday. Ilya Samsonov will get the start in goal for the fourth time this season.
Bertuzzi’s status may have spurred the Leafs to recall center Pontus Holmberg, but Keefe is taking advantage of the recall to give rookie Fraser Minten a breather. Holmberg scored two points (1 goal, 1 assist) in two games with the Toronto Marlies, and played 37 games for the Leafs last season.
Minten has played well defensively and on faceoffs in four games but has gone pointless. It is possible that the Leafs are giving the 19-year-old a chance to catch his breath and will insert him at a later time, but if he sits a few more games, the questions of whether to send him back to Kamloops will begin to pop up.
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