Game Night - Rangers and Toronto "Make Believes"

Well friends – its game night for our Rangers as they travel to Toronto to take on a team we like to call the Toronto “Make Believes”.  The Leafs (Editor – shouldn’t that be “Leaves” – the correct plural of Leaf?) (Dave Pucks – yes and no – this is how they do it for some reason) have 14 points – the same as our heroes – but with one more game played.  Not that it matters so much this early in the season.

Statistically – Toronto is better than the Rangers in almost every way – goals scored – goals let up – power play percentage – penalty kill – you name it.  And Phil Kessel is red hot right now.  On the other hand – the Leafs have lost 2 straight – though – there’s no need to panic as Toronto’s Richard Panik (Dave Pucks – see what I did there?) (Editor – if you mean “annoy us” then yes I do) got them a goal in their prior game’s last minute to send the game to OT and get his team at least one point in the loss.  Rangers have won 5 of the last 6 meetings.  We’re sending Cam Talbot out there tonight – to give Hank some rest on a travel day in what will be a 4 games in 6 days stretch.  

And we get Derek Stepan back for the first time this year with a fully healed femur (you need those for hockey) and without that broken-jaw faceguard we saw him with in last year’s playoffs.  Here is a wild guess at the lines.  Feel free to put your own name in for the 3^rd defensive pairing – you’re probably as good as what we have there now.

Line 1 - Nash-Brassard-St.Louis
Line 2 - Kreider-Stepan-Zuccarello (yay - Step returns!)
Line 3 - Hagelin-D. Moore-Stempniak
Line 4 - Glass-Hayes-Duclair (hey I thought the Duke had to be top 9 to stick here)

Defense pair 1 - Staal- Klein

Defense pair 2 - Allen- GirardiDefense pair 3- Hunwick-Kostka (or something like that - any of you ever play defense in the beer league?)

That’s all for now – see you after the game.  Still seats available for those of you who can travel to Canada in the next 20 minutes.