The Toronto Maple Leafs are on short rest as they host the New Jersey Devils for the 2026 Hall of Fame Game, where the team honours the annual inductees to the great building of the sport across the street before trying to add to their own resumes. This year’s edition will be tough sledding, as they come in less than 24 hours after a divisional loss, and have a very good team in their path.
Fast Facts
| Puck Drop | November 8th @ 7:00 p.m. Scotiabank Arena, Toronto |
| Broadcast | TV: TSN 4 (Regional) Radio: TSN 1050 Online: Sportsnet+ |
| Gameday Odds (Market Typical) | Maple Leafs +132, Devils -157 Maple Leafs +1.5 -194, Devils -1.5 +162 Goal Line 6.5 (Over +101, Under -121) |
About the Maple Leafs (8-8-2)
The Maple Leafs are looking to shake off a loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday (for readers who aren’t checking social media: the site had some downtime last night and I had morning minor hockey games to be at – we’ll have a delayed recap). Turnovers proved costly, goaltending proved shaky, and the offence proved limp in what ultimately landed as a 4-2 final against the rivals.
Toronto is digging themselves into a very deep hole by laying an egg against their own division. We’re now nearly a quarter of the way into the season and the Leafs are 0-3-1 against fellow Atlantic teams, which might be less concerning if the Atlantic wasn’t the deepest division in the league, maing every point matter more. For reference, the last-place Red Wings have a better record than ten other teams in the league – being in the basement in the Atlantic is still the mushy-middle of the league.
The good news is that tonight’s opponent isn’t in their division. The bad? They’re one of the best teams in the league.
About the Devils (12-5-0)
It’s felt like we’ve been waiting for this Devils team to arrive for a few years now, given their stable of quality players and coaching from a familiar face in Sheldon Keefe, who delievered consistently competitive results with Toronto’s core in the early parts of this decade.
Two big things have gotten in the way of New Jersey along the way, though – injuries, and goaltending. So far, the top end of their core in Jack & Luke Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, Dougie Hamilton, and Jesper Bratt have all been healthy – huge news particularly in the cases of Jack Hughes and Hamilton, who have missed significant time in almost all of the last five to six years with the team. The Devils have also given themselves a buffer by adding additional waves of support throughout their lineup, with Toronto native Luke Evangelista being the biggest skater add this year.
In goal? Well, if you’re going to get better results, there’s really only two ways to do it – spray and pray with a bunch of projects and hope one works, or find a way to get one of the 3-5 “goalies that matter” in the league. Initially, it looked like GM Sunny Mehta’s plan was to do the former, but once they saw a pathway to landing Connor Hellebuyck, they pounced. He hasn’t put up gaudy numbers just yet, but of his first four apperances, he’s landed on the winning end of all of them.
Projected Lineups
| Toronto Maple Leafs Lines | New Jersey Devils Lines |
|---|---|
| Easton Cowan – Auston Matthews – Jack Roslovic John Tavares – Nick Paul – William Nylander Dakota Joshua – Colton Sissons – Gavin McKenna Brandon Duhaime – Teddy Blueger – Zack MacEwen Jake McCabe – Darren Raddysh Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Troy Stecher Dakota Mermis – Cole McWard | Timo Meier – Nico Hischier – Luke Evangelista Arseny Gritsyuk – Jack Hughes – Jesper Bratt Anthony Mantha – Evan Rodrigues – Jesper Boqvist Amadeus Lombardi – Cody Glass – Connor Brown Luke Hughes – Brett Pesce Jonas Sigenthaler – Dougie Hamilton Declan Chisholm – Johnathan Kovacevic |
| Starting Goalie: Anthony Stolarz 5-10, 2.66 GAA, 0.910 SV% Backing Up: Sergei Bobrovsky | Starting Goalie: Connor Hellebuyck 4-0-0, 2.44 GAA, 0.891 SV% Backing Up: Jake Allen |
Toronto’s forward lines are expected to remain the same tonight, though they’ll be hoping for better results. The blue line, oh boy. Morgan Rielly is out, which wasn’t totally unexpected given his departure – but so is Chris Tanev, meaning they’re losing their entire second pair. Tanev is being reported as a “planned maintenence day”, which seems insane to me. Yes, they’re probably erring on the side of caution for a veteran who has already been injured once this year. On the other hand, the team has lost more games than they won and are already losing another big defenceman tonight. Not to mention, the idea of needing planned maintence scratches for a player who still has nearly four years left on his deal seems like a huge problem. Hopefully it’s specific to this injury, and not the first show of “this is what he is now”, or galaxy braining over at the now-consolidated MLSE analytics laboratory.
Speaking of rest days, it seemed like there was a chance we could see one for Sergei Bobrovsky tonight with Artur Akhtyamov called up earlier in the weekend, but Rielly’s injury forcing the hand on McWard killed the possibility of that. Bobrovsky will back up Stolarz.
The Devils are deep. Very deep. There’s a ton of very good to great scattered across the group, and the floor is reasonably high. Their lowest pedigree forward front, Amadeus Lombardi, is one of my favourite stories in all of hockey, playing an extra year of U18 AAA hockey after his OHL draft year, followed by the lost COVID-19 season for a lot of young Ontario players, followed by an OHL rookie season that shot him up to the fourth round in the draft. Lombardi has been a point-per-game AHLer for two years now and at 23, is now an NHL regular. He’s still looking for his first NHL goal – could that come tonight?
Last Matchup
The Leafs faced the Devils three times in 2025/26, the last of which was a shootout loss in March. The two teams each exchanged a goal a period – in every case, Toronto’s player scoring first followed by a Devils player a couple minutes later, but the Leafs neither trailed until the end nor ever held a lead bigger than one. In the shootout, Paul Cotter and Jesper Bratt both scored on Anthony Stolarz, while William Nylander and Auston Matthews went goalless.
Injuries Of Note
Touched on above, Morgan Rielly is out for an unknown amount of time with a lower body injury. Chris Tanev is out tonight with “shrug emoji”. No one else has a timeline update at the moment.
On the Devils side, they’re without Seamus Casey. Who is Seamus Casey? Exactly. (In seriousness, the rookie defenceman was injured in preseason and is still about a month to six weeks out).
Streaks Of Note
- The Maple Leafs have generally been on the positive side of this head-to-head in recent years, winning six of the last ten games going back to March 2023. While the Devils have the last win, Toronto has the edge in four of the last six.
- Auston Matthews leads the Leafs in assists (9), points (14), and shots on goal (28) in their last ten games. William Nylander leads in goals with six.
- Jack Hughes leads the Devils in goals (7), points (14), and shots on goal (42) in their last ten games. This is a team that likes to shoot the puck a lot, with five forwards having 27 or more shots in that span. Jesper Bratt, the only forward in the top six who doesn’t fit that bill, leads New Jersey in assists over their last ten with eight.
- Darren Raddysh has goals in his last three games against the Devils. Given that he’s still 0-for on the season with the Leafs and how much he’ll be relied upon tonight, this would be a great time to keep a streak like this going.
- Anthony Stolarz has historically been very good against New Jersey, posting a 0.929 save percentage in his career against the Devils.
- Nico Hischier is sitting at 499 carer points, for milestone watchers.
Early Thoughts
There is no in-between tonight. The Leafs are either going to get speedbagged in incredible, embarassing fashion by a very good team coached by one of their former bench bosses and a roster that has plenty of local ties, or they’re going to steal an absurd 2-1 win because of just how much the odds are against them right now.
Nothing would surprise me here, besides maybe a boring 4-3 coin-toss.
