The Leafs are in town for the first time in years. Whats more, they are vastly outperforming all reasonable expectations so far. Toronto's hodge-podge of B-grade stars, kids and who-the-hell-is-that players have 16 points in 15 games under new skipper Ron Wilson. They have a negative GD, but tend to out-shoot their opponents by nearly 8 shots per game (35.2 for, 27.5 against). The only other teams in the same league are San Jose and Detroit.
As a result, pretty much every Leaf player has a positive corsi number and, if Vesa Toskala wasn't currently one of the worst tenders in the league, Toronto would probably be much higher in the standings.
I dont how that's possible (Hagman? Grabovski? Ponikarovski? Antropov? Kulemin?) but it certainly is impressive. Wilson has the club playing a very aggressive, very up-tempo game that seems to be getting returns. Considering the difference between rosters, it should be an easy win tonight...but, as WI points out, the Flames might actually be the underdogs.
Unlike Toronto, Calgary has underperformed relative to expectations thus far. The finger pointing has already begun, although one really just has to look at the ES stats of the Flames stars to understand what the problem is.
Further complicating things for the Flames is injury/illness woes. Cammalleri and Iginla are still fighting off the flu, with the former being a "game time" decision tonight.
In addition, while Phaneuf's eye-swelling has come down recently, it looks like Jim Vandermeer will be sidelined with a broken ankle for at least 6 weeks. Add in Lombardi's lingering shoulder problems and the practice lines look like this heading into tonight's contest:
Glencross-Boyd-Iginla
Bertuzzi-Langkow-Bourque
Nystrom-Conroy-Moss
Roy-Primeau-Prust
Regehr-Sarich
Pardy-Phaneuf
Aucoin-Giordano
Yeesh.
Iginla with Boyd and Glencross? Great third line, I suppose...
Of course, we all know Conroy is going to end up with Iginla for the real action, so that leaves Nystrom/Boyd/Moss to be exploited.
How about Pardy with Phaneuf? If that sticks, I honestly hope one of the credentialed media guys around town will ask Keenan "Why do you choose to play Dion Phaneuf with erstwhile healthy scratches? Last year, you did the same with Anders Eriksson. Now, Adam Pardy. How does a player go from being the 7th defenseman to the 4th?"
Tasking Phaneuf to play 30 minutes a night while carrying around a lesser partner doesn't compute for me. Whats more, Phaneuf isn't yet a Pronger or Lidstrom type that can play with anyone without repercussion. As I showed this summer, dragging around Bubba last year had a significant effect on Phaneuf's results.
I suppose Keenan likes to have a third pairing that can take advantage of soft match-ups. Or maybe he's hesitant to double-up on the liabilities in a single pairing. Still, playing Phaneuf will lesser partners looks like hamstringing the team's most potent weapon on the back-end to me. And it creates a chaos duo that can be exploited by an opposing coach, especially given that Phaneuf is out there a lot and not just against 4th liners.
All of this is moot if Pardy ends up playing 5 minutes tonight, however...which is a distinct possibility.
Good news? The Leafs PKing is the worst in the league. And if there's one thing the Flames have actually been pretty good at so far, it's scoring with the man advantage. Calgary's best chance for success tonight is to turn this into a special teams affair (assuming the PEN For/Against differential is around 0).
Prediction - 3-2 Flames. Langkow, Glencross and Giordano (it has to happen eventually) for Calgary. Punch Imlach and Harold Ballard for Toronto.
Go Flames.
