Toronto Maple Leafs 2008 Opening Night Projected Lineup

That being said, if Mike Van Ryan shows he is healthy and can revert to his 2007 form, expect him to get a lot of playing time—including on the second power-play unit.

Wilson has also stated that he intended to split up Kaberle and Kubina at least to start the year, in order to provide a more balanced lineup, and that Finger was the likely candidate to start the year with Kaberle.

Taking all this into account here are the likely defensicee pairings:

Kaberle   Finger

Colaiacovo   Kubina

Stralman   Frogren

Mike Van Ryan will likely open the year as the teams spare defender.  And obviously I do not have to put up the goalies on here.

So again, here is the likely opening-night lineup for the 2008 Leafs:

LW                         C                  RW

Ponikarovsky   Grabovski     Antropov

Kulemin          Steen          Hagman

Blake         Stajan         Tlusty

Bell              Devereaux     Mayers

LD          RD

Kaberle   Finger

Colaiacovo   Kubina

Stralman   Frogren

Spares: Moore, Hollweg, Van Ryan

Side Notes

Wilson has said the most likely scenario for team captain will be a rotating captaincy deployed by teams such as the Sabres, Wild and Wilson's former team the Sharks—before they decided on Patrick Marleau).

Kaberle has taken himself out of the consideration for team captain due to his quiet nature. Due to recent comments that he is "shocked" by the changes on the team, it is very likely that he will waive his no-trade clause on or before the deadline this year.

Fletcher raised eyebrows earlier this week when he declared Nik Antropov the team's only legitimate first line forward, and Ponikarovsky the only other player close. This apparently struck a nerve with Jason Blake and fired up Alex Steen.

Again, I realize I'm not the first person to write a similar report as this.  But being that most of the others were guesses—and yeah that's probably much more fun than this was—I decided to actually do a bit of research and put together the opening-day lineup (barring injuries), based solely on comments by the GM and coach.

To those of you who read this entire article—you must indeed be Leafs Fans.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?