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Matthews, Leafs dominate in victory over Habs |
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The Toronto Maple Leafs dressed a lineup that may be the closest to what they eventually go with when the regular season begins next week and they were dominant in a 5-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens at Ricoh Coliseum on Tuesday.
Auston Matthews scored a hat trick, Patrick Marleau and William Nylander scored for Toronto, and Frederik Andersen made 22 saves in the Leafs third straight pre-season victory.
Montreal also went with an NHL lineup (except goalie Carey Price and center Jonathan Drouin), but were outhustled by the speedy Leafs.
Matthews opened the scoring 43 seconds into the first period on a long shot that got by Habs backup Al Montoya. The Calder Trophy winner tallied again just over four minutes, converting on a loose puck at the side of the Montreal net.
After Patrick Marleau and Jeff Petry exchanged goals in the middle frame, Matthews completed the hat trick by splitting the Montreal defense and beating Montoya through the legs.
Toronto went with their top three lines in Matthews, Nylander and Zach Hyman, James van Riemsdyk, Tyler Bozak and Mitch Marner and Marleau, Nazem Kadri and Leo Komarov, but dressed former KHLer Miro Aaltonen to center the fourth line with Matt Martin and Connor Brown.
In spite of the lopsided score, Leafs head coach Mike Babcock was not happy with the club's effort after getting out to a big lead.
“We got up 3-0 and made some decent plays, but to be honest with you, I didn’t think we were great after that.” Babcock said after the game. “We spent a lot of time in our own zone, didn’t execute very good and Montreal worked harder than we did.”
Aaltonen put forth a solid outing, but it is still not certain whether he has wrestled away the fourth line job away from veteran Dominic Moore. With three games remaining, Babcock still is in evaluation mode.
"I’m gonna dress some real good lineups in a couple of those games, as far as NHL players go and then we’re gonna have some NHL practices.” Babcock said on Saturday. “That doesn’t mean anything will be in stone, but it will give (the media) something to write about and talk about for a couple days before we really decide what we’re doing.”
The other conspicuous starter was Calle Rosen, who partnered with Connor Carrick on the Leafs third defensive pairing. The 23-year-old Swede suffered a minor cut in his neck area after being nicked by the skate of Habs forward Brendan Gallagher and took a heavy hit behind the Toronto net from Phillip Danault, but put up a solid outing after his most impressive performance on Saturday in Buffalo.
Rosen and Aaltonen may have the inside tracks on the vacant positions, but Babcock insists that jobs are still up for grabs.
"There's way more (players) than that (in competition for jobs)." Babcock said. "There's a whole bunch of guys in those battles, but (Aaltonen and Rosen) got the first opportunity with the big club."
The Leafs and Habs will meet again on Wednesday at the Videotron Centre in Quebec City.
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