Maple Leafs' Line Combinations at Practice Creating Questions for Lineup Against Detroit

The Toronto Maple Leafs took care of business on Wednesday night against a formidable opponent in the Montreal Canadiens, taking them down 5-2 to open the season 1-0-0.

They now shift their focus to another divisional opponent in the Detroit Red Wings, in a home-and-home series, with the Leafs playing in Detroit tomorrow night before hosting the club at Scotiabank Arena on Monday.

Game 1 featured a lot of great performances, including William Nylander's 3-point night, which is probably why head coach Craig Berube kept the same lines in practice on Friday.

Matthews Knies and Matias Maccelli remained the wingers on Auston Matthews' line. John Tavares was centering Nylander and Bobby McMann, while Max Domi was in between Dakota Joshua, and Nicholas Robertson.

Steven Lorentz, Nicolas Roy, and Calle Jarnkrok represented the fourth line.

On defense, Morgan Rielly was paired up Brandon Carlo. Likewise, things remained the same for Jake McCabe and Chris Tanev, and Simon Benoit reprised his role on the third pairing with Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

While the lineup looked the same from Wednesday night, Berube did add some intrigue by having Easton Cowan and Sammy Blais rotating into certain lines. The former was seen rotating on Domi's line and the latter was rotating in on Roy's line, according to TSN's Mark Masters.

If Berube is going to make changes, it will be interesting to see at whose peril since most players had a good night. You could make a case for Robertson, who didn't have the best performance as he posted a minus-1 rating, but did have 4 shots and 2 hits in 10:40 TOI.

Nevertheless, we likely won't find out whether or not there will be any concrete line changes until Saturday, at which point we'll have a better understanding of where certain players fit into the picture.