Bruins vs. Leafs: Betting odds, injuries, Boston need to arrest recent slump

The Boston Bruins head to Scotiabank Arena and a clash with the Toronto Maple Leafs for the 25th time in the past two (and a quarter) seasons.

Safe to say, the Bruins and the Maple Leafs know each other well, what with 7 play-off games with each other both the previous two seasons, along with the usual regular season encounters – this marks the third time the two sides meet in this very young season.

Both teams have suffered their injury woes this year already; the Maple Leafs will take on the Bruins without Mitch Marner, though are lucky enough to have welcomed back Travis Dermott and Zach Hyman, both of whom started the year on injured reserve.

The Bruins, meanwhile, are down Jake Debrusk, Torey Krug, Karson Kuhlman, David Backes, John Moore and Brett Ritchie. With that said, the latter two have been practising in non-contact jerseys, so are clearly on the mend.

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Since the accumulation of injuries started impacting the Bruins line-up, they’ve suffered a depressing slump; going from riding a ten-game point streak to four consecutive losses, including giving up a four-goal second period lead to the Panthers a few days ago.

While the likes of Anders Bjork, Trent Frederic and Urho Vaakanainen are decent players, they don’t really match the calibre of the guys that are missing. Not at this point in their young careers, anyhow.

One thing going for the Boston Bruins is the emergence of Par Lindholm, who arrived in the summer, and though not propping up scoring for Boston on the third line in any way, is also not conceding Goals Against when he’s on the ice.

He’s one of very few players in the league with a Goals Against of 0 this far into the season and certainly is a solid 25 minutes of overall ice-time ahead of his nearest rival in this statistic. He faces a Toronto team that gave up on him last season, trading him to Winnipeg for Nic Petan, who has struggled to make their line-up.

The focus for the Bruins will surely be to get Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak scoring early on. The Bruins top line has been a boon for the Maple Leafs in so many of their encounters with us the past two seasons; fingers crossed, it stays that way tonight.

To turn around the recent slump will however require a full team performance. It will be vital to scrap hard for pucks, through a bit of weight around to get the Leafs skill players off their games and in general be nuisances.

Keeping out of the box would normally be key for the Bruins, but despite a plethora of options, the Leafs special teams play has been inept of late. However, given they have guys like John Tavares, Auston Matthews and Tyson Barrie among others, it’s probably still safer to stay away from the box.

BRUINS BETTINGS ODDS & LINES

Courtesy of The Action Network, the Bruins are -105 on the Moneyline. The Maple Leafs comparatively are -115 at the time of writing.

Safe to say that even the betting markets are seeing this as a very tight contest. Not only will that be factoring how well these two sides know each other, but also the fact both have had patchy form at best in the past few weeks.

BRUINS PROJECTED LINEUP

Below is the expected line-up for the Boston Bruins, with Brett Ritchie and John Moore both taking to the ice, albeit in red non-contact jerseys.

MAPLE LEAFS PROJECTED LINEUP

Per Kristen Shilton of TSN Sports, here were the practice lines on Wednesday. Yesterday’s practice skate was an optional one for the Maple Leafs and per Mark Masters on Twitter, the expected scratches were there along with backup goaltender, Kasimir Kaskisuo.

HOW TO WATCH

ESPN+ has a free 7-day trial that includes live streaming for this game on all your smart devices! Besides NHL games like this Atlantic Division clash of the Maple Leafs and Bruins, ESPN+ features a selection of live games from MLB, MLS, Serie A, FA Cup, and EFL.

If you’d like to purchase tickets to this game, StubHub has standing room tickets for as low as $101 at the time of this writing. This game will also be televised on TVAS, TSN4 and NESN.

The puck drops at 7PM Eastern Time with the Bruins hoping to leave Toronto with a second victory over the Maple Leafs in this seasons’ series.