Report: Leafs announce their full roster for tomorrow night's game.

The National Hockey League's preseason is drawing to a close and that means two things. The first is that we are only just a few short days away from meaningful NHL games and the second is that teams are now scrambling to make the final cuts to their roster as their preparations for the 2018 - 2019 NHL regular season get into full swing.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and head coach Mike Babcock are now gearing up to take on the Montreal Canadiens on Monday night in Toronto but it now looks like that the game will be used by Babcock to evaluate some of the talent on the fringes of his roster. On Sunday night the Maple Leafs officially announced their line up for Monday night's game at the Air Canada Center and most of the names that would associate with the Maple Leafs core roster appear to be entirely absent from this roster. 

Players like star forwards Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavaresm and of course William Nylander didn't make the list and on the blue it's much of the same. On a normal night you would expect to see names like Morgan Rielly, Travis Dermott, Nikita Zaitsec, and Jake Gardiner but every single one of those players is also absent from the line up that the Leafs will look to field on Monday night. 

It's unclear if Babcock is doing this in order to give his main guys some extra rest before the start of the regular season or perhaps if he is using this as a final gauge to determine which of these players will become a more permanent fixture of the Maple Leafs roster heading into this upcoming season. This is purely speculation on my part but I expect the players in this line up will get moved around quite a bit tomorrow night as Babcock looks to test players' abilities to adapt to different situations, different line mates, and of course different opposition. 

The group of forwards will consist of Dmytro Timashov, Trevor Moore, Par Lindholm, Kasperi Kapanen, Josh Joories, Andreas Johnsson, Carl Gundstrom, Colin Greening, Pierre Engvall, Adam Cracknell, Adam Brooks and Jeremy Bracco. Joining that group of forwards will be six defensemen on the blue line and those players will be Jordan Subban, Rasmus Sandin, Martin Marincin, Juston Holl, Connor Carrick and Andreas Borgman.

The two goalies for the game will be both Curtis McElhinney and Garret Sparks, although at this time it's not entirely clear which of the two goalies will start or how much playing time they can each expect to see. This will likely be a very important game for the goalies in particular as it still remains relatively uncertain which of these two men can be expected to fill the backup goaltending role behind Frederik Andersen over the course of the regular season.

How good of a look Babcock will get at his organizational depth will likely depend on what kind of roster the Montreal Canadiens are expecting to field on Monday night. If the Habs play their regulars this could be a big game for these youngsters, but if the Habs also bring their B team I have to question how much Babcock will truly be able to learn from the contest.

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