Leafs make Ilya Samsonov a scratch against the Senators tonight

The Leafs need to put their best foot forward in this one to begin climbing the Atlantic Division leaderboard. The Buds currently sit 5th in the division with 28 points, but have games in hand on Tampa Bay, Detroit and Florida. A win puts them within 2 points of the Panthers (32 points) for 2nd in the division and the Leafs will still have 2 games in hand on the Panthers after tonight's game, win or lose.

We already know that Joseph Woll gets the nod for tonight's game, as was confirmed by the Leafs after Wednesday's practice. However, we didn't know whether Ilya Samsonov or Martin Jones would dress as his backup. Sheldon Keefe could not confirm his backup yesterday, stating that he wanted to see how Ilya Samsonov felt after today's morning skate. After skating this morning, we now know that Samsonov is officially a scratch for tonight's game.

Samsonov has been battling a mysterious illness over the last week or so and hasn't played a game since November 24th. He put in a good amount of work on the ice today, but whether it's because the Leafs want to give him more time to recover or if he himself told the team he wasn't quite ready, he'll be sitting tonight in Ottawa, with his next opportunity to dress coming Saturday against the Predators.