And So It Begins...

Finally the day is upon us, NHL hockey returns tonight, and most importantly the return of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs open up their season at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto against divisional rival Montreal Canadians at 7 pm. The Leafs have not won a home opener in ten long years, albeit was against the Canadians, so without a questions it would be a huge win for all Leafs Nation if they can pull it off.

The roster the Leafs will set out tonight will only contain seven players from the season opener last season, witch is very good news for all fans because of the horrific stretch the team went on last year to begin their season, going a dismal 0-7-0-1 in their first eight games, virtually eliminating them selves from having any sort of successful season right off the bat. The Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson has stated that the most important thing for his team this year is to come out hot out of the gate, and have a solid start.

The opening night roster will look like this:

Forwards:

Versteeg – Bozak – Kessel
Kulemin – Grabovski – MacArthur
Sjostrom – Brent – Armstrong
Orr – Zigomanis – Brown

Defence:

Phaneuf – Beauchemin
Kaberle – Schenn
Komisarek – Gunnarsson

Goal:

Giguere (starter)
Gustavsson


This line up looks very promising with five players making their Toronto Maple Leaf regular season debut. The lack of one player in the line up is a bit of a surprise to Leafs fans, young rookie Nazem Kadri will be beginning his professional career with the Toronto Marlies of the AHL, the choice to send him down by the Leafs brass was made this past Monday. Although this choice has taken a lot of criticism by the Toronto sports media you do not need to look far to see how this has worked before for Brian Burke, where in Anaheim he sent down players like Ryan Getzlaf who was just named the teams captain and was part of Canada's gold medal win in Vancouver last February, Corey Perry who was also part of the Canadian squad and finally Bobby Ryan who played for his country at the Olympics as well. All three spent significant time in the AHL and are now all elite superstars in the NHL. So there is hope for Nazem, and i wouldn't doubt it if we see him with the big club sometime during the season.

So lets hope the Leafs can pull out the win tonight over the Montreal Canadians and get the 2010-2011 campaign off on the right foot!

Ps: Be sure to Vote on my new Poll about who will be a stand out in the first two weeks of the season!

Cheers and GO LEAFS GO!