After what has felt like a long summer without hockey, the Toronto Maple Leafs are back, and they play a game today for the first time since game five of the second round in last season’s playoffs.
Today, the Maple Leafs will visit the Senators for a Battle of Ontario to open up their eight-game preseason schedule against some of their Atlantic division rivals.
Puck drop is scheduled for 2:00 pm ET at Canadian Tire Centre and will feature one of the multiple lineups we will see Toronto use for their preseason games.
The @MapleLeafs roster for this afternoon’s preseason game in Ottawa. pic.twitter.com/07eJGf7rYj
— Leafs PR (@LeafsPR) September 24, 2023
The roster above for this afternoon’s game by the Maple Leafs PR account on X shows a Marlie-heavy lineup with a handful of NHL players.
William Nylander, Max Domi, Matthew Knies and Sam Lafferty headline the forward group, with Morgan Rielly, Timothy Liljegren and even Conor Timmins headlining the defence.
For the goalies, Ilya Samsonov, Joseph Woll and Martin Jones are not in today’s lineup and instead will have two of the club’s younger goalies, Dennis Hildeby and Keith Petruzzelli.
Toronto will host the Senators tomorrow night in Toronto at Scotiabank Arena after today’s game, so we will likely be treated to the other group of players at camp, including two of Samsonov, Woll and Jones between the pipes.
Opponents lineup:
Our projected lines to kick off preseason! 💪#GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/ZGHoRyIwsD
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) September 24, 2023
Just like the Maple Leafs, the Senators are going with an AHL-heavy lineup today, with some everyday NHL players getting some action as well.
Ottawa’s lineup is headlined by youngsters Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, Jake Sanderson, Jacob Bernard-Docker and, of course, Claude Giroux. Artem Zub on defence and Anton Forsberg in goal also round out the everyday NHL players for the Senators in today’s game.
We will most likely see the other everyday players in tomorrow night’s game in Toronto.
Players to watch:
If you’re into prospects, then there’s a handful of players to watch in today’s game.
Roni Hirvonen, Fraser Minten, William Villeneuve and Dennis Hildeby highlight that group. However, if you’re mainly focused on the players that we will be seeing play every day for the Maple Leafs, then it’s the seven players I mentioned earlier that headline the NHL group.
Three players in particular that caught my eye in today’s lineup are Nylander, Domi and Knies. We might see them on a line today at some point, but given at the start of training camp Domi – Nylander – Jarnkrok was a line, we could see someone filling in for Jarnkrok in today’s game.
Another line we saw at the beginning of camp was Knies – Tavares – Lafferty. Tavares isn’t in today’s game, so we could see someone in his place as well.
It’s training camp, and we are likely to see a mix of things from Sheldon Keefe to see what could potentially work and what might not work before the start of the regular season.
