Toronto Maple Leafs plays host to the Chicago Blackhawks in their lone meeting of the season - NHL Preview
The defending champions, Chicago Blackhawks will be in action as they go to the Air Canada Centre to play the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This is the lone meeting between the two sides. The last time these two met was during last season where the Hawks won the game 3-2 when they were on road which led to their Stanley Cup win.
Both the teams are playing well but the Hawks can be said to be on fire currently.
Hawks have come up with some brilliant performances that have seen them winning seven consecutive games.
Their most recent win was the 5-2 home thumping of the Carolina Hurricanes this past Friday.
Maple Leafs is on a decent streak of their own during which they have won six games in regulation time out of the last nine games. Their most recent win was against the Philadelphia Flyers, a game which they won 3-2 this past Thursday.
The inclusion of James Reimer in the department of goal keeping has given the Maple Leafs a lot of boost.
They have not only been able to come up with decent results but stopped the huge amount of goals that were scored against them.
Reimer has come up with six regulation time out of the eight games he has played maintaining 2.13 goals against average.
"He's just keeping us in every game and we are trying to reward him the best we can," said forward Darryl Boyce, who had the game-winner in Philadelphia.
The Maple Leafs have played 65 games during the course of the season out of which they have won 29 games in regulation time and nine games in overtime to score a total of 67 points and maintain tenth spot in the Eastern Conference.
On the other hand, the Hawks have played 65 games during the course of the season out of which they have won games in 36 regulation time and six games in overtime to score a total of 78 points.
They are in the fourth spot in the Western Conference and out of the close battle that developed between the teams for the play-off cut.
Hawks recently started to display some slow and less confident final periods. This had been a problem they had to face over the past couple of games but things turned around in the last game they played.
Hawks were scoring three goals in the opening eight minutes. Though they were leading 2-1 as the period started, the goals resulted in the Hawks winning the game by 5-2 in the end.
"It was a one-goal game, it's a hockey game," coach Joel Quenneville said. "We got comfortable and relaxed and probably took it off the gas in the last two games. We stayed with it pretty well (Friday) and did what we had to do. It was a good game."
Tags: