Utah Mammoth @ Toronto Maple Leafs
07:00 PM at Scotiabank Arena
Watch on: SN, TVAS, Utah16
The Leafs last game was at home on November 3 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, which Toronto won by a score of 4-3 in regulation. The Leafs have a record of 7-5-1 for a 0.577 Points %.
The Utah Mammoth last played away on November 4 against the Buffalo Sabres. The Mammoth won by a score of 2-1 in overtime, and their current league record is 9-4-0 for a 0.692 Points %.
Them
The refrain last year about the “Hockey Club” was that they weren’t the Coyotes anymore. Now it’s looking like they aren’t just a hockey club either. Who is this new team besides one that’s getting richer every day?
They have a veteran defence corps with one rookie in Dmitri Simashev. The forwards trend younger, are mostly Arizona draft picks, and they acquired two goalies who were blocked on their previous teams from getting more work.
They aren’t completely assembled from scratch like an expansion team, but they are closer to that structure than many teams.
Utah is winning games the old fashioned way – by dominating at five-on-five in shots, Expected Goals and goal scoring percentages. Interestingly, they are on the bottom of the middle ranked teams in time spent in the offensive zone. They get their dominance from the lowest shot rate (Corsi) allowed in the NHL and good enough quality of offence.
Their power play is good, but they are scoring under expected goals there by several goals – but you are expecting unrepresentative results in just 13 games, right, so you aren’t deciding if they are good or bad by how much they have happened to score so far. That would be silly.
Their PK has been good and they have not been scored on shorthanded so far this season.
Both goalies are in the top 32 by Goals Saved Above Expected (Moneypuck) on low levels of work.
Lines
Last Game (2025-11-02) via Daily Faceoff
Clayton Keller – Barrett Hayton – Nick Schmaltz
JJ Peterka – Logan Cooley – Dylan Guenther
Lawson Crouse – Jack McBain – Michael Carcone
Brandon Tanev – Kevin Stenlund – Kailer Yamamoto
Mikhail Sergachev – Dmitri Simashev
Nate Schmidt – John Marino
Ian Cole – Olli Määttä
Vitek Vanecek – likely starter
Karel Vejmelka
Us
The Leafs need to perform a magic trick to activate Scott Laughton, expected to be the 4C tonight.
Easton Cowan, Sammy Blais and Calle Järnkrok are sitting out. Matias Maccelli is back to face his former team. The extra defender is Dakota Mermis as Brandon Carlo is good to go after taking practice off yesterday.
It was an optional skate today so consider all this information subject to change.
Lines
David Alter via Daily Faceoff from yesterday
Matthew Knies – Auston Matthews – William Nylander
Nicholas Robertson – John Tavares – Bobby McMann
Dakota Joshua – Nicolas Roy – Matias Maccelli
Steven Lorentz – Scott Laughton – Max Domi
Morgan Rielly – Brandon Carlo
Simon Benoit – Jake McCabe
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Philippe Myers
Anthony Stolarz – starter
Cayden Primeau
The Game
Utah have a tough to play against formula where they limit shots pretty dramatically. However their offence is weaker, with not a lot of sustained pressure. The Leafs need to do what you always need to do: be hard on the puck, make good choices and lay on the offence as hard and as much as possible. This isn’t a team where you want to wait for the power play to win it.
