Leafs week in preview: January 22nd - 28th

"Hey Phil, your car as nice as this one?"

Again we say: "forget about last week, the Leafs are in the playoff hunt!" The Leafs are in 9th still, now 2 points behind the Washington Capitals for 8th. All is not lost: the PK is solved and James Reimer will put up god like numbers again, yes, Phil Kessel is slumping (the goalless total is at about 78 hours now) but Lupul is as hot as ever, and he's playing some pretty good hockey too. No Saturday night game this week as Phil Kessel, Joffery Lupul and Don Phaneuf (my new nickname for him) booked it off.


Monday/Tuesday January 23rd/24th

Toronto (23-19-5 9th in the East) vs. NYI (19-21-6 12th in the East) 7 PM Leafs TV/SNET-O

The Islanders are playing well, 6-4-0 in their last ten and three straight wins has climbed them out of the basement and on the fringe of being a fringe bubble team. Local hero, John Tavares, has a 12 game point streak going, earning 21 points over that time, almost half of his point total so far this year.

The Isles have had 5 goalies start a game for them this season, but when your goaltender is Rick DiPietro what can you really expect? The $67,000,000 dollar man has recently shut down his season, running his games played total in the past four years to 47. For all you Isles fans out there hoping he retires, you are screwed, but hey, maybe he'll be a nice guy and finance Mr. Wang's Lighthouse project.

Leading scorers:
NYI:  John Tavares (19-29-48)
TOR: Joffery Lupul (20-31-51)

Powerplay:
NYI:  6th 19.5%
TOR: 5th 20.1%

Penalty kill:
NYI:  8th 84.5%
TOR: 30th 75%

Starting Goalie:
NYI:  Evgeni Nabokov (2.35 .919)
TOR: Jonas Gustavsson (2.84 .907)

Keys to victory:
1) New York's PK isn't garbage, and their goaltending is much better then the Leafs, they must be dreadful at 5vs5 to be that far down in the standings.
2) Basically the Leafs need to stay off the PK because Tavares can and will kill us every time.
3) Don't be too disheartened when every player on the Islanders, that was born in Toronto, scores a goal in one of the two games.
4) As Leafs fans we can hold our head high that we at least still show up for games when our team sucks, or wait.. is that what we're not supposed to do?

GO LEAFS GO!