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Winnipeg Jets at Toronto Maple Leafs Gameday Questionnaire: The Phil Kessel is a cyborg edition

The Winnipeg Jets are taking their two-game winning streak on the road where they will visit the Toronto Maple Leafs, broadcast nationally as part of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada coverage.

As part of our gameday coverage, we had a few questions relating to the Leafs before puck-drop later this evening.

With that, here are our pals from Pension Plan Puppets in today's instalment of Gameday Questionnaire:

1. Will the return of Joffrey Lupul finally stop the Leafs from sucking?

Lupul traditionally doesn’t have good possession stats and poor possession has been one of the Leafs’ biggest problems this year. They are just always seeing more pucks go at their net than at their opponents. They’ve spent part of the year winning in spite of the odds but it’s catching up to them. Where Lupul does help is that he pushes the wingers down the depth chart including, amazingly, one of the TWO enforcers that Randy Carlyle felt was necessary to the team’s success. Frazer McLaren will be a healthy scratch tonight. What this does is provide Carlyle more options as he won’t have two dead weights in his lineup but rather just one.

2. Is Phil Kessel a cyborg from the year 3000 sent to earth to destroy Ondrej Pavelec and the Winnipeg Jets/Atlanta Thrashers?

Well, you could say that about a lot of forwards since Pavelec and the Jets/Thrashers aren’t very good but yes, Kessel appears to enjoy playing in arenas where he gets booed and where he faces below average goalies (see his performances against Brian Elliott). Unfortunately for the Leafs, unless things go really poorly he’ll only have one of those in play tonight but he will have his favourite running mate back in Joffrey Lupul.

3. If you could challenge one Leafs' player to a barn fight, who would it be and why?

Well, they'd all kill me but I'd take Kessel because I think he would have his heart in the fight less because I always say nice things about him and that reticence might help me survive.

Ed. Note: We thank PPP for giving us their time in this edition of Gameday Questionnaire. Our Q&A with their representatives can be found HERE. Look for our next edition tomorrow with our pals at Silver Seven.

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