The Toronto Maple Leafs open the season against the Montreal Canadiens.
The pregame narrative: The two rivals meet in the season opener for the second straight year and I’m predicting another Maple Leafs win. The under on the game total is also an intriguing play.
Check out our Maple Leafs vs. Canadiens picks for the NHL season opener on Wednesday, Oct. 9.
Maple Leafs picks vs. Canadiens
Go to full NHL betting markets
Best bet: Maple Leafs -1 (-113)
Last October, the Leafs won the opening game, 6-5. They went on to sweep the season series, winning 3-2 and 4-2 in the following meetings.
Both teams should be improved with the Habs’ young core getting one year older and the Leafs adding a few key contributors in the offseason.
Toronto will have a new goaltending tandem heading into this season. Joseph Woll is expected to start and he gained the attention of Leafs fans with a stellar postseason run before going down with an injury.
The defensive core has some new faces with the acquisitions of Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Tanev should help massively with defensive duties while OEL is a nice piece to have on the second power play unit.
Montreal is expected to be better but I don’t see the still-rebuilding squad keeping up with the firepower of the Maple Leafs. The Habs allowed the fifth-most goals last season (281).
Key stat: Toronto has won five straight games against the Canadiens with a +14 goal differential.
Quick picks
Under 6.5 goals (-103): Besides the 11-goal outburst on opening night last season, the other two Toronto and Montreal games stayed under this mark.
It’s easy to look back and predict goals here but I expect both teams to be locked in defensively. Tanev will play on the top pairing with Morgan Rielly and will help shut down the opposition. He blocked 207 shots last season while recording only 24 penalty minutes.
Sam Montembeault will start in net for Montreal. The 27-year-old was a positive between the pipes for the Habs last season.
He had a fairly heavy 41-game workload and ranked 31st out of 98 eligible goalies with 3.3 goals saved above expected, according to Moneypuck.
That was better than Stuart Skinner, Jake Oettinger, Ilya Sorokin and Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Robertson anytime goalscorer (+360): Auston Matthews is a fine choice (-159) if you don’t mind the juice but I’d rather sprinkle on Nick Robertson at a much more appealing price.
The winger led the Leafs with five goals during the preseason and looks like he’s ready to make some noise for his team.
Robertson had 27 points (14 goals) in 56 games last year as a 22-year-old. That equates to an impressive 40-point pace — all in just over 11 minutes of ice time per game.
This season, he’s projected to be on the second power play unit. Considering he had just three PP points last season, that alone should bump his scoring up.
Picks made at 1:30 p.m. on 10/08/24
Spencer is a true sports junkie. A graduate of the Sports Journalism program at Centennial College, he first joined NorthStar Gaming as an intern in 2023. He is now a contributing writer. He loves finding the edge to bet on in all sports but has a deep passion for the NBA and UFC. Previous stops include Sportsnet.