The Leafs have spent three games introducing one of hockey’s most radically rebuilt lineups. Nashville arrives with the kind of goalie capable of making introductions uncomfortable.
The Maple Leafs are 1-2. The Predators are 1-1. Neither record tells us very much yet, which is exactly why Tuesday’s game is useful.
Toronto is trying to learn what its offense looks like after an offseason that rearranged almost everything around Auston Matthews. Kirill Marchenko is now skating beside him. Gavin McKenna is beginning his NHL career next to John Tavares and William Nylander. Nick Paul and Colton Sissons are centering the third line, while Anthony Stolarz is projected to handle the crease.
Nashville arrives with its own reconstruction underway. Steven Stamkos and Ryan O’Reilly remain together, Filip Forsberg is working with Matthew Wood and Nils Höglander, and Jonathan Marchessault has moved into a deeper scoring role alongside Ross Colton and Mavrik Bourque. Juuse Saros is projected to start as the Predators open their first road trip of the season. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/news/nashville-predators-toronto-maple-leafs-game-preview-october-6-2026))
The market still gives Toronto a meaningful home advantage, with the Leafs around -150 and Nashville near +130. That is useful as a measure of expectation rather than a command about what Tuesday is supposed to become. Toronto is being treated as the stronger team. Nashville has exactly the kind of goaltender who can force the Leafs to prove it.
Toronto’s Talent Is Obvious. Its Shape Is Still Forming.
The Maple Leafs did not spend the offseason trying to preserve the previous version of themselves. They changed the roster aggressively enough that even familiar stars are now learning different relationships around them.
Matthews has Marchenko on his wing after years of Toronto building its top line through a different set of players. Marchenko already has his first Maple Leafs goal, scoring on the power play in the loss to Ottawa, and his direct finishing ability should eventually give Matthews another weapon that opponents cannot simply collapse toward the middle to contain.
The second line may be even more interesting. McKenna enters his fourth NHL game still looking for his first point, but placing an 18-year-old first-overall pick beside Tavares and Nylander says something about the kind of player Toronto believes it drafted. The Leafs are not hiding him on a fourth line and asking him to survive eight sheltered minutes. They are placing him inside meaningful offensive responsibility immediately. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-on-tap-news-and-notes-october-6-2026))
That creates enormous potential and obvious early-season friction. Players who have barely shared NHL shifts are being asked to read each other’s routes, identify who retrieves pucks, understand when Nylander wants possession and determine when McKenna should attack rather than defer.
Those problems are normal in October. Saros is not the goalie a team wants to face while working through them.
Saros Can Turn Possession Into Frustration
Nashville does not need to dominate Toronto territorially to create a workable road game. Saros changes the requirements.
The Predators can survive stretches without the puck if they protect the middle, clear rebounds and force Toronto to generate second and third chances rather than assuming the first shot will solve the possession. That is especially relevant against a Leafs lineup whose skill can produce impressive offensive-zone time without every shift becoming dangerous.
Toronto’s challenge is to make Saros move. Point shots through clean sightlines and perimeter possession may produce shot volume, but they do not necessarily produce goals against an established NHL starter who has seen almost every version of that attack. Matthews, Nylander, Tavares and Marchenko have to create lateral movement, recover rebounds and force Nashville’s defense to turn toward its own goal.
That places more responsibility on Toronto’s new combinations. Chemistry becomes visible when the first chance fails. Does the weak-side forward know where the rebound is going? Does the high forward rotate down without exposing an odd-man rush? Can McKenna identify when to attack the middle before Nashville closes it?
Saros does not make those questions impossible. He makes mistakes in the answers much more expensive.
Nashville Is Rebuilding Around Familiar Veterans
The Predators’ own lineup should not be confused for a settled product.
Stamkos, O’Reilly, Forsberg and Marchessault give Nashville enormous accumulated experience, but the organization has rearranged the players around them. Alexander Kerfoot is working with Stamkos and O’Reilly. Wood and Höglander flank Forsberg. Colton and Bourque give Marchessault a different third-line environment than the veteran-heavy groups Nashville leaned on previously.
That creates a different kind of early-season problem than Toronto’s. Nashville knows what its central veterans are. The question is whether the newer pieces can increase the speed and puck recovery around them enough to keep those veterans from carrying every difficult possession.
The 2-1 win over Dallas provided one useful version of that structure. Nashville did not need to produce an offensive explosion. The Predators kept the game under control, received the saves they needed and found enough offense to make a small lead stand up. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/predators/news/game-day-preds-at-maple-leafs-october-6-2026-10-06))
That is probably a more useful blueprint in Toronto than trying to match the Leafs chance for chance. The longer Tuesday remains close, the more Nashville can ask whether Toronto’s rebuilt lineup already knows how to manufacture goals when transition opportunities disappear.
Matthews Doesn’t Need More Shots. Toronto Needs Better Sequences.
Matthews scored his first goal of the season in Toronto’s loss to Ottawa, and nobody should be particularly worried about whether one of hockey’s best finishers will eventually start producing. The more useful question is what happens around him.
Marchenko adds another shooter to the top unit. That can make Toronto more dangerous, but it also forces the line to establish who is responsible for the possessions that do not end with a clean shooting lane. Jack Roslovic becomes important there because every elite scoring line still needs somebody capable of extending a shift after the original play disappears.
Nashville will probably be comfortable allowing Toronto to possess the puck on the outside if the Predators can keep Matthews from receiving it in the middle with his feet set. Roman Josi, Nicolas Hague, Brady Skjei and Nick Perbix do not need to eliminate Toronto’s possession. They need to determine where that possession happens.
The Leafs’ real offensive ceiling will show itself when Nashville takes the first option away. A talented group can generate a shot. A connected group creates the next two chances after the first one fails.
McKenna’s First Point Is Less Important Than His First Adjustment
The easiest storyline around McKenna is that he has gone three NHL games without recording a point. It is also probably the least useful way to evaluate the start of his career.
He has three shots while averaging a little more than 14 minutes per game, and Toronto continues to use him beside Tavares and Nylander rather than reducing his role. That tells us more about how the Leafs view his first week than the empty scoring column does. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-on-tap-news-and-notes-october-6-2026))
Saros presents the sort of opponent that should accelerate the learning process. NHL goalies close space faster than junior players are accustomed to seeing, and established defensive teams recover into the middle before young forwards finish processing the first opening.
McKenna’s adjustment may therefore be less about finally scoring and more about moving the puck before the obvious lane exists. Nylander can punish a defense that shifts toward McKenna. Tavares remains excellent around the net. The rookie does not need to manufacture the entire sequence himself.
If his first NHL point comes Tuesday, it may arrive because he learns when not to hold the puck.
Stolarz Has His Own Version of the Saros Assignment
Toronto is projected to counter Saros with Anthony Stolarz, which keeps the goaltending matchup from becoming a one-sided argument.
Stolarz’s job should look different. Nashville does not have to create the same level of sustained possession Toronto can produce. The Predators are more comfortable waiting for mistakes and using their veteran shooters to turn isolated chances into goals.
Forsberg remains the clearest example. He does not require five opportunities in a shift to change the game. Stamkos still punishes teams that give him space, particularly on special teams, while Marchessault has spent years producing offense when defenders lose track of him for a few seconds.
That means Stolarz cannot measure his night by workload alone. A relatively quiet first period can still contain the one defensive-zone turnover that changes the score. Toronto’s reconstructed blue line has Morgan Rielly and Darren Raddysh on the first pair, Jake McCabe with Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson beside Troy Stecher. The group has enough experience, but several of those partnerships are still new. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/news/nashville-predators-toronto-maple-leafs-game-preview-october-6-2026))
Nashville’s best offensive strategy may simply be making those partnerships make decisions under pressure.
The First Ten Minutes Should Tell Us Which Game Nashville Gets
Toronto has the obvious incentive to start fast. The Leafs are home, coming off a loss and facing a Nashville team beginning a road trip. If they can establish the forecheck immediately, force the Predators’ defense into repeated retrievals and make Saros work through traffic, the game can become the sort of high-pressure environment Toronto’s offensive depth is built to exploit.
Nashville wants almost the opposite. The Predators should be comfortable with an opening stretch that feels uneventful. Every clean exit, every neutral-zone reset and every Toronto possession that ends without a rebound moves the game toward the type of structure Nashville can manage.
The longer the score remains even, the less important Toronto’s theoretical offensive ceiling becomes. A 0-0 game halfway through the second period does not care how many elite shooters appear on the lineup card. It cares about which team makes the next mistake.
Saros gives Nashville confidence in that kind of game. Toronto’s task is to prevent him from defining it.
Three Games Cannot Tell Us What Toronto Is Yet
The Leafs’ 1-2 record will naturally draw attention because Toronto rarely gets the luxury of quietly changing an entire roster. Every early loss becomes evidence for somebody’s preferred explanation.
Three games are not enough for that.
They are enough to see how Jim Hiller wants to organize the lineup. Marchenko is being trusted beside Matthews. McKenna is getting meaningful minutes. Easton Cowan, Paul and Sissons are being asked to create a functional third line, and Toronto has left the same 18 skaters together for a third consecutive game rather than immediately searching for different combinations. ([nhl.com](https://www.nhl.com/news/nashville-predators-toronto-maple-leafs-game-preview-october-6-2026))
That continuity is probably more important than whether Toronto is 1-2 or 2-1 on October 6. The Leafs are trying to discover which relationships can survive an 82-game season. Tuesday gives them another useful test because Nashville is unlikely to make those relationships look better than they actually are.
Toronto Has the Higher Ceiling. Nashville Has the Cleaner Path.
The Leafs can win this game by overwhelming Nashville with talent. Matthews, Nylander, Tavares, Marchenko and eventually McKenna give Toronto more ways to produce high-end offense than most teams can comfortably defend. Home ice also gives Hiller the ability to control matchups and decide which line sees Nashville’s most vulnerable combinations.
The Predators do not need to answer that talent shift for shift. Their path is narrower and probably easier to define: Saros keeps the game stable, Josi and the defense protect the middle, Nashville avoids feeding Toronto transition chances and the veteran forwards convert one or two mistakes.
That is why this feels closer than Toronto’s home-favorite status suggests. The Leafs probably have the better collection of offensive weapons. Nashville may have the more established method for surviving a game that never opens up.
Prediction: Nashville Predators 3, Toronto Maple Leafs 2. Toronto’s rebuilt offense should create enough possession to make Saros work, but Nashville does not need to win that possession battle. If the Predators protect the middle and keep the game within one goal, their goaltending and veteran finishing give them enough ways to turn a tight road game.
The Leafs are still figuring out what they can become.
Saros is the kind of goalie who can make them figure it out the hard way.
Sources
NHL, October 6, 2026 — Predators-Maple Leafs projected lineups and goaltenders | Nashville Predators, October 6, 2026 — Game Day at Toronto | NHL, October 6, 2026 — NHL On Tap and Gavin McKenna early-season usage | EVAnalytics, October 6, 2026 — current NHL market data