NHL LIVE Playoffs Game 1 Toronto Maple Leafs vs Ottawa Senators April 20th 2025 Game Watch Along

Wipe the slate clean, the standings mean nothing now.

Them

The Ottawa Senators are an average team in most categories. The hit the 50% mark in Corsi and Expected Goals, and their Goals Against rate is also average. Their major weakness is scoring goals, and you can find the cliff in scoring talent pretty quickly in their roster. They make up for that enough to make the playoffs by being better defensively and getting good goaltending. Their power play is average, and that's good enough to get them some goals when they need them at least some of the time.

Their roster is strong on defence, weak on offensive impacts from most defenders, and their best player, Tkachuk, has boxcars that read like Matt Knies' do because the goals just aren't there team wide.

Lines

Brady Tkachuk - Tim Stützle - Claude Giroux
David Perron - Dylan Cozens - Drake Batherson
Ridly Greig - Shane Pinto - Michael Amadio
Nick Cousins - Adam Gaudette - Fabian Zetterlund

Jake Sanderson - Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot - Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven - Nikolas Matinpalo

Linus Ullmark - starter
Anton Forsberg

Us

Ryan Reaves was recalled, and all previously injured players (save Jani Hakanpää) lined up at practice yesterday. The extra line was Max Pacioretty, David Kämpf and Reaves. The extra pair was Dakota Mermis and Phil Myers.

Lines

Matthew Knies - Auston Matthews - Mitch Marner
Max Domi - John Tavares - William Nylander
Bobby McMann - Pontus Holmberg - Nicholas Robertson
Steven Lorentz - Scott Laughton - Calle Jarnkrok

Jake McCabe - Chris Tanev
Morgan Rielly - Brandon Carlo
Simon Benoit - Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Anthony Stolarz - starter
Joe Woll

The Game

I find myself at this moment surprisingly okay with the "take what they give you" mantra on this year's Leafs. I do understand why you can't push too hard to make offence happen against a team like the Senators. But the balance has to be there.

Do you know what hobbles are? In harness racing (that's where there's a cart behind the horse) most races require the horses to pace. This is an unnatural gait for a horse as the legs on the right take a step in tandem and then the left and so on. To train a racehorse to do this you use a hobble that loops around the leg and forces the aft leg to move when the fore goes, um, forth. Some horses always have to wear them even in races, but the very good ones can produce the gait with power and fineness without the controlling hobble.

Finally the metaphor is revealed!

Are the Senators so over-hobbled that they can't score, or is it the roster? Are the Leafs too loose? Did they used to be? Are they better now? These are all narratives painted over our memories of games we watched very unclinically. And what all this comes down to is the method by which you manage risk. A narrative is just more interesting to read than something that sounds like impenetrable advice about the bond market from a financial planner.

A lot of narratives about the Leafs fall apart when you pull aside the curtain and find Anthony Stolarz calmly standing there, smile on his face. But forget for a minute the need for Stolie, and the sometimes languid pace of Leafs offence, and look at the return on the investment. The Leafs score more goals in All-Situations than Expected Goals says average players should produce. Look again and there's a lot of skaters pulling strings on this team along with Stolarz.

Hobble the offence too much, and we've seen what you get. Get the balance right and they are an unstoppable force.

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