The Toronto Maple Leafs put forth another solid effort in a 4-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, ON on Wednesday; the identical score of the exhibition opener in Lucan, ON on Tuesday.
Tyler Ennis scored a pair of goals in his Leafs debut, Auston Matthews and Jeremy Bracco tallied for Toronto and Frederik Andersen stopped all 19 shots he faced before being replaced by Calvin Pickard in the third period.
The next roster cutdown from 46 players will likely occur after a home-and-home against the Buffalo Sabres at Scotiabank Arena on Friday and Key Bank Center on Saturday, but some players have already made their mark towards earning a roster spot.
The goaltending battle between incumbent backup Curtis McElhinney and Garret Sparks is likely to go down to the final cutdown to 23 at the end of the month. On defense, Calle Rosen, Andreas Borgman, Justin Holl and Igor Ozhiganov had good first performances against the Sens.
Rosen had a primary assist on Bracco’s third period goal and played over 21 minutes on Wednesday, while Borgman scored in the opener on Tuesday. Dermott’s shoulder injury could keep the sophomore defenseman out of Friday’s game against the Sabres and if it lingers longer, it could provide more of an opportunity for Rosen or Borgman to make the club.
With right defense an area in need of much improvement, right handers Holl and Ozhiganov are putting in a serious bid to challenge Connor Carrick (who had an assist on Wednesday) for the vacant bottom pairing job. The Leafs are in need of some size on the blueline after the departure of Roman Polak and the former KHLer may be able to provide that.
The center battle may have taken a turn towards Swedish import Par Lindholm after he had a good outing playing between Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen on Wednesday. Frederik Gauthier played just 10:36 against Ottawa before suffering a shoulder injury. Head coach Mike Babcock indicated on Wednesday that the injury was not of a serious nature.
The two-goal performance by Ennis against the Sens gave the diminutive forward a leg up towards earning a spot, but it is not a foregone conclusion at this point. Babcock continues to push Kapanen, Johnsson and Josh Leivo for more effort and contribution, which they will need from them if the William Nylander impasse lasts into the regular season.
The Leafs will be experimenting with a new power play alignment with the departure of Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk. On Tuesday, Tavares lined up with Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly, Mitch Marner and Marlies winger Dmytro Timashov.
Babcock indicated that he plans to use Auston Matthews on the first unit, with Tavares taking the JVR spot down low, but the Leafs head coach left himself some room to change things around if the unit struggles.
“That’s how we are going to start and go from there, but it’s got to have success.” Babcock said. “When we were recruiting (Tavares), I asked him what spot he wanted to play on the power play and he said ‘net front’. That surprised me to be honest with you, I didn’t know what he was going to say, because we were going use (Matthews) there.”
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