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The Toronto Maple Leafs will look to increase their North Division lead to double digits as they take on the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre on Saturday. The Leafs are 2-1 against their historical rival and lead the Habs by eight points in the standings, but will be playing their fifth games in eight days, while Montreal has not played since beating Toronto 2-1 at Scotiabank Arena last Saturday.
Frederik Andersen will make his 16th start of the season after Michael Hutchinson subbed in on Thursday in the Leafs 7-3 win over the Senators and Carey Price (5-2-2, 2.64 GAA, .901 save percentage) will go for Montreal.
The Habs hope to continue their success in limiting Auston Matthews (who leads the NHL with 16 goals) by matching up the defensive pairing of Shea Weber and Ben Chiarot against the Leafs center. Matthews has three assists in three games against Montreal, but is scoring at greater than a goal-per-game pace against the rest of the North Division.
"(Montreal's) defense are strong, they protect the net, they defend well as a team with a group of five people and chances are hard to come by." Keefe said. At the same time, (Matthews has) had some really good looks through the different games against them that haven't gone in. The goaltender has a say in that as well, but the opportunities have been there for him and we've got to keep working to find those as a team."
Zach Hyman, who sat on Thursday with a undisclosed day-to-day injury, took the morning skate in Montreal and will return to the lineup in place of Nic Petan and likely step back in on the left side with John Tavares and William Nylander. Head coach Sheldon Keefe also confirmed that Zach Bogosian will replace Mikko Lehtonen.
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The speculation regarding the Leafs adding a top-six forward before the April 12 trade deadline zeroed in on Nashville forward Mikael Granlund this week, as Elliotte Friedman
reported in his 31 Thoughts column that the Predators may be pondering a sell off of rental players like Granlund, Nick Cousins and Erik Haula in the next few weeks.
According to Friedman, the Leafs inquired about the 28-year-old forward in the off-season as part of their search for inexpensive veteran depth, but his price tag was too high. Granlund (who has seven points in 13 games this season) can play center and left wing, and the Leafs may feel he would be a good fit for the left side with Tavares and Nylander, allowing Zach Hyman to play a checking role on the third line with Alex Kerfoot and Ilya Mikheyev or Wayne Simmonds.
The Athletic’s
Adam Vingan believes that Preds GM David Poile would be asking for a pair of draft picks for Granlund, a similar haul that Detroit and New York got for Gustav Nyquist and Mats Zuccarello at the deadline in 2019.
Both the Wings and Rangers retained a sizable chunk of Nyquist and Zuccarello’s cap hit and Nashville would likely have to keep up to 50% of Granlund’s $3.75 million salary to accommodate the Leafs cap constraints. Toronto does not have a third or seventh round pick in the 2021 Draft, so it is possible that the club would defer the picks to 2022 or deal an existing prospect like Timothy Liljegren in a potential swap.
With the potential of other teams dropping out the race and other forward candidates coming available, the Leafs may be able to find another option that is not as costly, but it does appear that Granlund is someone that Dubas covets.
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