Maple Leafs Opening Night Scouting Report: The Canadiens Threat

Maple Leafs Opening Night Scouting Report: The Canadiens Six Days Out

Maple Leafs opening night is Tuesday, Sept. 29 at Scotiabank Arena against a Montreal team that spent the summer doing almost nothing, which is the most intimidating thing about it. Toronto turned over most of a roster. Montreal added Chris Kreider to a group that won 48 games and reached the Eastern Conference Final, and otherwise ran it back. Six days out, the preseason evidence says the Canadiens are further along.

We wrote in August about the 28-point gap between these two clubs — Montreal's 48-24-10 and 106 points against Toronto's 32-36-14 and 78. This is the update, with actual September hockey to look at.

Montreal Ran It Back on Purpose

The Canadiens' offseason philosophy was continuity, and it was a defensible read of their own situation. They scored 283 goals and allowed 256 last season, beat Tampa Bay in seven, beat Buffalo in seven, and lost in five to Carolina in the conference final. That is not a team with an obvious hole to patch.

The one significant addition was Kreider, and we argued at the time that the signing locked down Montreal's core rather than reshaping it. A net-front power forward is the piece a young, skilled, fast team adds when it has decided it is close. Everything about the Canadiens' summer reads as a club that believes its window is open now.

Contrast that with Toronto, where John Chayka signed or traded for nine notable pieces and changed the head coach, the associate coach and most of the bottom six. Both approaches can be correct. Only one of them requires the team to learn how to play together in September.

Cole Caufield Is Already in Form

The specific September data point that should worry Leafs fans is Cole Caufield. Per game reports, Caufield scored twice on Monday, including the overtime winner, as Montreal came from behind to beat Ottawa 3-2 at the Kraft Hockeyville game.

Preseason scoring is usually noise. Caufield is the exception, because his game is the one that translates most directly from exhibition to real hockey: he gets to the same spots and shoots from the same places regardless of the opponent. A Caufield who arrives on Sept. 29 already finding those spots is a different problem than one who needs three weeks.

For a Toronto defence corps that is still sorting out its pairings — Morgan Rielly's usage, the Chris Tanev workload question, where Darren Raddysh and Oliver Ekman-Larsson fit — the first game of the season against a shooter in rhythm is a rough introduction.

The Preseason Meetings Were Not Encouraging

These clubs have already played each other this month, and the results were not what Toronto wanted. The Leafs dropped both halves of a split-squad doubleheader against Montreal, including an overtime loss at the Bell Centre. The consensus description of Toronto's overall performance across those games was sobering, and the framing that kept recurring was the same one that matters here: Montreal was essentially unchanged and looked like it, while Toronto was completely turned over and looked like that too.

The honest caveat is that preseason split-squad lineups tell you almost nothing about a real game. Neither team dressed what it will dress on Sept. 29, and Toronto was deliberately running combinations it will never use again. But the qualitative observation — one team has muscle memory and the other is building it from scratch — is not a lineup artifact. That will still be true in six days.

The Goaltending Matchup Is Toronto's Best Argument

If there is a place where the Leafs can steal this game, it is in their own crease.

Sergei Bobrovsky signed a three-year contract with Toronto on July 1 and forms the NHL tandem with Anthony Stolarz. Public projection models have not been kind — we walked through a projection that put Toronto's goaltending near the bottom of the league — but a 37-year-old two-time Vezina winner with multiple Stanley Cups is exactly the profile that beats a projection on any single night. Season-long models and one game in September are different questions.

Opening night against a divisional rival, in front of a home crowd, with a veteran goaltender motivated to justify a contract that a lot of people questioned, is the sort of game where the outlier happens. If Toronto wins on Sept. 29, this is almost certainly why.

Where Toronto Can Actually Win the Game

Three things, concretely.

• Special teams. Toronto's penalty kill finished fifth in the NHL at 83.5 per cent last season and returns most of its structure. If the Leafs go even on special teams against a Montreal power play that has more talent than theirs, that is a win on the night.
• The Matthews line against the Suzuki line. Auston Matthews is healthy and back from knee surgery. Home ice means Jim Hiller gets last change and gets to choose this matchup rather than have it chosen for him. Use it.
• Keeping Gavin McKenna's first NHL game simple. The 18-year-old is expected to make his debut. Offensive-zone starts, second power-play unit, no defensive-zone draws against Montreal's best. Hiller has already signalled he intends to bring him along carefully.

What Toronto cannot do is try to trade chances with this team. Montreal is faster through the neutral zone and better at converting rush opportunities. A 5-4 game favours the Canadiens. A 2-1 game does not.

The Depth Battle Toronto Actually Won This Summer

It is worth stating the Leafs' side of the ledger fairly, because the gloom around the preseason has obscured something real. The bottom six that Montreal will face on Sept. 29 is not the bottom six that got outplayed nightly last season.

Chayka's summer produced a functional, versatile group with genuine centre depth: Colton Sissons on a two-year deal at a $4.25 million cap hit, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime, Jack Roslovic, and a Nick Paul trade that answered the third-line centre question directly with a big two-way pivot under contract for three more seasons. Add Easton Cowan, who survived the largest cut of camp and whom Jim Hiller named as his standout from the first practice of his tenure.

Last season, Toronto's fourth line was a liability the coaching staff hid. This season it is a group that can be sent over the boards in a tied third period. Against a Canadiens team with real top-end talent and a thinner fourth line, that is the matchup Toronto should be trying to create rather than avoid.

The Injury That Could Still Change the Lineup

One complication remains unresolved going into the final week. Dakota Joshua is dealing with an undisclosed injury, and Hiller said Monday that he was not sure whether it would affect Joshua's availability for the opener. Joshua has been skating, but reportedly with the Marlies group rather than the NHL side, which is rarely the sign of a player about to be cleared.

We covered the Joshua situation in detail this week. The short version for opening night: if he cannot go, Toronto's fourth line changes and Cowan's role grows. That is not a disaster — arguably it is an upgrade in speed — but it is one more piece of unfamiliarity against a team that has none.

The Bigger Point Behind One Game

Nobody's season turns on game one, and a Toronto loss on Sept. 29 would not mean Chayka's rebuild failed. But this particular opener is unusually informative, because the two clubs are running opposite experiments in the same division.

Montreal is testing whether continuity plus one addition beats regression. Toronto is testing whether wholesale change closes a 28-point gap in a single summer. Public models generally side with Montreal — the Canadiens are picked to finish comfortably ahead of the Leafs in most Atlantic previews, and Toronto is broadly projected as a wild-card bubble team.

Beating them at home in game one would not settle that argument. It would, however, be the first piece of evidence in months that points Toronto's way.

What's Next

Toronto has one preseason meeting with Ottawa remaining, and the roster is due Sept. 28 — the day before puck drop. That is a tight turnaround for a club still making real decisions about its bottom six and its seventh defenceman.

Puck drop on Sept. 29 is 7 p.m. ET from Scotiabank Arena. Follow the Atlantic race as it starts on our standings page, where the Atlantic race starts the moment this game ends.

The oldest rivalry in the sport, a brand-new Toronto team, and an opponent that did not feel the need to change a thing. That is a measuring stick whether the Leafs want one or not.