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Leafs shutout Sabres, position battles heat up |
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The Toronto Maple Leafs posted their first victory of the pre-season, as Curtis McElhinney and Garret Sparks combined to make 18 saves in a 3-0 shutout over the Buffalo Sabres at Ricoh Coliseum.
Morgan Rielly scored on an individual rush early in the second period to give Toronto the winning margin, and Leo Komarov and William Nylander added empty netters in the waning moments of regulation.
The game was marred with 13 minor penalties, including three calls for slashing, which has been a focus of officials during the exhibition schedule.
The Leafs dressed the top line of Auston Matthews, Zach Hyman and Nylander, along with Patrick Marleau, Nazem Kadri and Komarov and the top pairing defensive unit of Morgan Rielly and Ron Hainsey, which means that they will have less firepower in the lineup when they face the Sabres at Key Bank Center in Buffalo on Saturday night.
The focus of the evening were players battling for the few open spots on the Leafs 23-man roster.
Finnish forward Miro Aaltonen has raised eyebrows a week into camp is challenging for the fourth line center job, thought to be earmarked for veteran Dominic Moore.
“(Aaltonen) comes over here, he was an offensive player in the KHL last year and we’re asking him to be a defensive player, good on faceoffs, penalty killing, that kind of thing.” Babcock said Friday morning. “It’s probably a big change for him, just the nuances of how we do things. He has to get up to speed or you tend to look bad, but he does have skill and he does have determination and it looks like he is a player that is in the mix.”
Aaltonen centered a line with Josh Leivo and Connor Brown on Friday and the 24-year-old had one shot on goal and was on the wrong end of a couple physical confrontations, as he was slammed into the boards by Zemgus Girgensons in the first period and outmuscled by Benoit Pouliot in the middle frame.
In the ongoing battle for spots on the blueline, the rookie pairing of Andreas Borgman and Travis Dermott made a favorable impression. The 22-year-old Swede was more confident in his second pre-season game and once again showed off his physical side, laying out Sabres forward Evan Rodriques along the boards.
"(Borgman) is a man out there." head coach Mike Babcock said after the game. "No different than Aaltonen and those other (European) guys, he's got to learn a little bit while they're here. We have quite a few games here and we'll just keep getting them better each day, but I'm impressed by him. He's got a heavy shot, he's got evasive moves with the puck, he's just gotta learn about his stick and his gap a little bit."
Dermott has played the left side for all of training camp and mostly with 2017 top pick Timothy Liljegren, but on Friday the 20-year-old played the right side with Borgman.
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