TORONTO - When the Maple Leafs last faced the New Jersey Devils, they were brimming with the swagger that accompanied a 3-0-0 start to the season and being the highest-scoring team in the league. 

The Devils were off to a similarly strong start, and ended up embarrassing the Leafs in a 6-3 win. With a rematch on tap Thursday night, Toronto well remembers how they took New Jersey too lightly the first time around. The Leafs say they won’t underestimate these Devils again.

"They were playing with fire and energy and we have to come and match that from beginning,” said Frederik Andersen. “I think they caught us [off-guard] a little bit. We have to step up and be ready. They make it tough but we have confidence that our coaching staff is going to do a great job of scouting and getting us ready.”

For the fourth straight game, the Leafs will be without top-line centre Auston Matthews in the lineup. Matthews has been recovering from an upper-body injury since last week, and while he took part in a team practice Wednesday and an optional morning skate Thursday, the team’s medical staff deemed him unavailable. 

In his absence, Nikita Soshnikov will make his regular-season debut on the fourth line after being recalled from the Toronto Marlies on Tuesday. 

“[I expect him] to be good, to be mean, to be fast,” Mike Babcock said of Soshnikov. “To be a good penalty killer. To give us energy.”

Toronto is undefeated (3-0-0) without Matthews, but the clubs they’ve beaten (Minnesota and Boston) were both decimated by injuries. The Devils will be at nearly full strength, with centre Travis Zajac projected to make his regular-season debut after suffering an off-season pectoral injury. 

New Jersey is the sixth-highest scoring team in the NHL (3.47 goals per game) and like the Leafs, they’ve had several days of rest leading into Thursday’s contest. 

“I think it’ll be a real good test for us,” said Babcock. “When you look at it, it’s not just that win [against us], but they’re a good team. They skate, four good lines, six good D, real good goaltending, they get on the forecheck, work hard, compete hard. I like their team, they’re fun to watch and they never give up. It’ll be a tight, tight game and we better bring our A-game.”

Without their leading scorer in Matthews, the Leafs have had to adjust their game to account for the significant offensive loss. The details of their defensive game – smarter passes, fewer turnovers, better breakouts – have helped Toronto string together the last three wins. But Babcock feels when the Leafs aren’t playing well, it can be traced back to them getting in their own way.

“I think the emotional well, the emotion of a team, you have to get them to stand in the right spot, but you have to get people to feel good, play hard for one another and do things right,” said Babcock. “There’s a fine line in getting in your own way as a coach too. Obviously we didn’t handle that fine line as good…and it got away on us.”

“When you’re losing, you want to be winning and when you’re winning, you take your foot off the gas because you forget how hard it was when you weren’t winning,” added Zach Hyman. “We didn’t have that experience of losing, and now we’ve been through a stretch where it felt like we couldn’t win a game, to now where we feel like, this is where we should be.”

Maple Leafs projected lineup
Hyman-Marleau-Brown
Komarov-Kadri-Nylander
van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Marner
Martin-Moore-Soshnikov
 
Rielly-Hainsey
Gardiner-Zaitsev
Borgman-Carrick
 
Andersen starts
McElhinney
 
Morning skate notes

- No player in the NHL has spent more time on the ice this season than Andersen (960:49). He’s tied for a league-high 16 starts, but Andersen has yet to be pulled from a game he’s started, even when the results were poor. With a 10-6-0 record, .901 save percentage and 3.25 goals-against average, Andersen feels he’s turning a corner from a difficult early stretch to the season that saw him among the league’s bottom-five starters in save percentage. “Being out there, being able to compete every night, has allowed me to get a good feeling and shake off the start,” he said. “The more you’re out there, the more you’re going to end up feeling good. The confidence and belief in the coaching staff and the organization has been huge for me and been a good way to settle down and keep working at getting to where I want to be. 

- Special teams stand to play a major role in the outcome of Thursday’s game, and perhaps not positively for the Leafs. Their power play is 4-for-27 (14.8 per cent) dating back to Oct. 26 against Carolina, while the penalty kill is 26-for-33 in the same span (78.7 per cent). The kill had a huge game on Saturday against Boston, going 4-for-4 and containing a 5-on-3 power play in the third period. But facing the same team on the second night of a back-to-back is a different task than what a rested Devils club will present. New Jersey has the third-best power play in the league (25 per cent), boasting three goals in their last two games, while their penalty kill has allowed only three goals in their last six games.

- For the first time since leaving the Maple Leafs as a free agent in the summer, Brian Boyle is making his return to Air Canada Centre. Boyle was acquired by Toronto at the trade deadline last March to give the Leafs a veteran presence for the playoff push, and then inked a two-year, $5.5 million contract with New Jersey in July. He was diagnosed with CML, a type of bone-marrow cancer, before training camp began. Boyle played his first regular-season game with the Devils on Nov. 1, and has tallied one goal and one assist over seven contests since. “It’ll be good to see him today. I’ve been praying for him each night during the national anthem,” said Babcock. “When you get cancer, your whole family does. It’s a scary, scary thing, so good for Boyle and good to see him back. He was a big part of our team last year getting in the playoffs…we enjoyed having him here and obviously he’ll be a big part of Jersey as he moves forward.”