Buffalo Sabres down Toronto Maple Leafs in pre-season action
The Buffalo Sabres downed the Toronto Maples Leafs on the road at the Air Canada Centre over the weekend. The Sabers brought a skilled line-up and seemed to skate circles around a tired Leafs side, earning a 3-1 victory.
The Leafs chose to go with a younger line-up, which included the likes of Nazem Kadri, Christian Hanson, Marcel Mueller and Keith Aulie. The club did however dress veterans Mike Komisarek, Luke Schenn and forward Nikolai Kulemin to balance out the roster. In
net Jonas Gustavsson split time with rookie Jussi Rynnas.
The Sabres iced one of their most veteran line-ups of the pre-season, giving starts to Tom Connolly, Rob Niedermayer, Drew Stafford, Jason Pominville, Derek Roy and Thomas Vanek. Nevertheless, the team also included youngsters Zack Kassian and Tyler Ennis.
Buffalo split time in net between Jhonas Enroth and Ryan Miller.
The Sabres brought plenty of offence, amassing 44 shots to the Leafs 25. Strong play from both Rynnas and Gustavsson kept the game from getting away from Toronto, as the young net-minders were forced into a couple big saves.
The scoring started off with a goal from defenseman Andrej Sekera, who blasted a slap shot home from the blue line after getting a pass from Derek Roy and giving the visitors an early 1-0 lead.
The second period began similar to the first, as youngsters Ennis and Kassian were sprung on a two-on-one after Roy made a terrific outlet pass. Kassian slide the puck across to Ennis who made a nice move and stuffed the puck through Gustavsson’s five-hole.
Two minutes later veteran Neidermayer collected Buffalo’s third marker of the game, snapping home an unassisted wrist shot.
The Leafs were finally able to get on the board with only two minutes remaining in the second when Kulemin snapped home a brilliant wrist shot off a Mikhail Grabovski face-off win. Making the score 3-1 at the second intermission.
The third period did not see any scoring as the youngster Rynnas stood on his head making all 19 saves in the period. However, the strong play of the Leafs tender did not spur the club at the offensive end and the score remained 3-1 until the final buzzer.
The Leafs continue to struggle at the offensive end with their young stars not nearly producing as the public and coaching staff thought they would.
The two clubs will meet again on Monday night in another exhibition match-up.
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