DEFENSIVE PAIRINGS		Defense
MARC-EDOUARD VLASIC Rating: 72.6#77 LD	BRENT BURNS Rating: 78.5#5 RD	DL1 Rating Rating: 75.57#11 DL1
BRENDEN DILLON Rating: 72.0#92 LD	ERIK KARLSSON Rating: 78.3#6 RD	DL2 Rating Rating: 75.15#5 DL2
MARIO FERRARO	TIM HEED Rating: 72.1#69 RD	DL3 Rating Rating: 72.08#20 DL3

First line RW Patrick Marleau? Sure. Here are five things to watch for.

1. Andersen gets the start

This isn’t a surprise. It’s the first game of a back to back, and below is essentially where we’re at with sharing our thoughts on it.

Playing Andersen in Montreal on Saturday night makes more sense to a lot of us, but we’re not going to change Mike Babcock.

2. Playing for their jobs

It will be interesting to see how the bottom defensive pairing and the fourth line play now that they’re NHL jobs depend on it. With Dermott and Hyman close to returning, it seems reasonable to expect big things from the bottom of the roster, otherwise Dubas will have too easy of a job when it comes to sending players down.

3. Does Andreas Johnsson step up?

Back to back penalties don’t really endear you too much to the fan base or to your coach, and Andreas Johnsson has run a bit cold in 2019-20, despite still having 7 points in 11 games.

The thing with Johnsson is he isn’t paid to get assists, and 2 goals in 11 games is not a pace that will keep you in the top six or the first power play unit. He’s gotta step up and hopefully that happens soon. We’ve seen Kapanen begin coming to life and if the Leafs can have their top nine clicking soon a lot of the problems with defense and inconsistent goaltending will seem a lot smaller.

4. Come back Tyson Barrie we miss you

Remember how Tyson Barrie looked in the first few games of the season and how much joy that brought us? I’m curious what has happened since then because I miss that freewheeling fun that looked like the Avalanche version of Barrie. My guess is that Barrie is hearing a lot about defensive responsibility and he’s suffering from being used as a shutdown pairing because of how great Jake Muzzin is at shutdown top lines. The Leafs need to find a way of giving Barrie the green light a lot more, because otherwise I will be shedding real tears over giving up Nazem Kadri.

5. Preaching patience vs. Time to Panic

I don’t think this debate will end after tonight, but man, a win sure would be great so we can have a night off from Leafs fans either shouting about how the team has good corsi and bad PDO, and the other side yelling about how a 5-4-2 record is unacceptable at this stage in “the process.” To some extent both sides have some truth to them anyway. Generally I think the 20 game mark is when we know what we’re truly dealing with for the season and we can choose our path of happy or angry Leafs fans then. On the other hand, the time to panic crowd has a lot of truths behind it because it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve seen what Mike Babcock brings to the table and there’s nothing in Michael Hutchinson’s history that he’s going to wake up tomorrow and be a league average backup.

Let’s just say “you do you” and watch the Leafs in your own way.

Game time is 7:00 PM ET and it can be seen on Sportsnet One.