Election night showdown!
Just the facts
When: Tonight, 7 PM
Where: Scotiabank Arena – Toronto, ON
How to follow: NESN, 98.5 The Sports Hub
Opposing perspective: Pension Plan Puppets
Know your enemy
- 6-6-2, 14PTS, 3rd in the Atlantic Division
- Mitch Marner: 2G-12A-14PTS; William Nylander: 9G-4A-13PTS; John Tavares/Auston Matthews: 5G-6A-11PTS
- Anthony Stolarz: 4-2-2, 2.38 GAA, .919 save percentage
Game notes
- It’s Bruins vs. Leafs on (American) Election Day! Not sure which fills you with more existential dread: another American presidential election or another 2024-2025 Bruins game (though the hockey vibes are admittedly better after the weekend).
- I will not turn this into a political discussion, but please go out and vote today! It’s your civic duty, and you usually get a cool sticker.
- The Bruins and Leafs face off for the second time in a little over a week, with the Bruins beating the Leafs, 4-3 in OT, at TD Garden on October 26. That was a back-and-forth game that featured a late game-tying goal for Toronto.
- As mentioned above, vibes are improving slightly in the Bruins camp, with two wins (and two shutouts) in a row.
- It will be interesting to see if Jim Montgomery continues to rotate his goalies tonight, with each coming off of a shutout. Jeremy Swayman has been good against the Leafs, especially if you include last year’s first round, but Joonas Korpisalo has decent career numbers against Toronto as well.
- Speaking of decent career numbers, a game against Toronto could be a good one for David Pastrnak to snap back into form (if you can call near-PPG production bad form): Pastrnak has 38 points in 29 career regular season games against the Leafs.
- On the Toronto side of things, things have cooled off a bit for them after a decent start. The Leafs have lost two in a row and five of their last seven, though two of those losses came in OT.
- I haven’t been paying a ton of attention to the Leafs this season, but this stat was so surprising that I thought it was a typo: the Leafs have the second-worst power play in the entire league, converting at just 10%. I have no idea how a team with that much high-end offense can have a power play that bad.
See ya tonight!