Sharks vs Leafs

SJSTFan   28 February 2017

Rookie William Nylander celebrating a goal.

Auston Matthews isn't the only rookie to pay attention to from Toronto

Tonight the young guns from Toronto visit San Jose for the first and probably only time this season. The Sharks look to string together two wins for the first time since the January 31st contest against Chicago and the February 2nd game against the Vancouver Canucks. Since those two victories, the Sharks have gone a mediocre 3-1-5. Somehow, the Sharks still maintain a 5 point lead and two games in hand on Anaheim and Edmonton. Thank you overtime points.

The Sharks are still without Donskoi tonight and we will also see Sorensen for the third time this season. Sorensen has 1 assist and is a plus 1 in his two previous games with the Sharks. Jones will also be starting in net tonight, which isn't a surprise to anyone keeping track of the rhetoric this season.

As the trade deadline looms around the corner, Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog are still available. On another team, Patrick Sharp is now unlikely to be moved due to injury. There are still some other possible targets around and we will know within the next 18 hours if the Sharks decide to make a splash.

As for the team we are playing, a lot of attention will focus on Auston Matthews. That isn't really the story of the team in my opinion though. I would like to note that there are seven rookies on the Maple Leafs (Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Brown, Zaitsev, Hyman, Soshnikov) and they have combined for 240 points. That's an average of 32.86 points per rookie. Three of the top five scorers on the team are also rookies. I think it is safe to say that the Toronto Maple Leafs have finally found a new indentity.

Rookie center Zach Hyman  

Lucky for us though, we should be able to find the back of the net against these guys. The Leafs defense has not been complementary to their explosive offense, giving up 182 goals on the season. That 182 is tied for 6th worst in the entire league. We could go into the advanced stats, but I'll leave that for the other site.

Lineup:

Sharks
Kevin Labanc – Joe Thornton – Joe Pavelski
Patrick Marleau – Logan Couture – Mikkel Boedker
Tomas Hertl – Chris Tierney – Joel Ward
Marcus Sorensen – Micheal Haley – Melker Karlsson

Paul Martin – Brent Burns
Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Brenden Dillon – David Schlemko

Martin Jones (starter)
Aaron Dell

Maple Leafs
Zach Hyman – Auston Matthews – William Nylander
James van Riemsdyk – Tyler Bozak – Mitch Marner
Leo Lomarov – Nazem Kadri – Connor Brown
Matt Martin – Brian Boyle – Nikita Soshnikov

Morgan Rielly – Alexey Marchenko
Jake Gardiner – Nikita Zaitsev
Matt Hunwick – Roman Polak

Frederik Andersen (starter)
Curtis McElhinney