Welcome to stop four of our road trip, everyone off the bus in beautiful... Buffalo? Well, shit. The Leafs are 1-1-1 on this road trip, which is a .500 points percentage and thus way above their record before this road trip meaning things are going pretty well. The Leafs nabbed three out of their last four possible points with strong play in Anaheim and Dallas and look to continue their recent success in the amputee chicken capital of the world.
Viktor Stalberg has been returned to the Marlies and Jiri Tlusty, famous only for his six goals and four assists in eight AHL games this year and nothing else, gets the call in his place.
Our lines tonight look as follows, via Rogers Sportsnet:
Offense:
Jiri Tlusty - Matt Stajan - Lee Stempniak
Jason Blake - John Mitchell - Nikolai Kulemin
Niklas Hagman - Mikhail Grabovski - Alexei Ponikarovsky
Colton Orr - Rickard Wallin - Wayne Primeau
Defense:
Francois Beauchemin - Ian White
Tomas Kaberle - Michael Komisarek
The Buffalo Sabres are off to a strong start. Ryan Miller has carried them to a 7-1-1 start and to be honest I'm not sure why more people aren't talking about Buffalo this year. Before the season I felt if Buffalo could stay healthy this year they'd be able to do a lot of damage and so far that's the case. Of course they still have Tim Connolly and Derek Roy who will break eventually.
This is going to be a tough game, the Leafs will need to play excellent hockey to stay in this. In their last game Buffalo relentlessly forechecked the Devils and penned them in their zone for long stretches which resulted in the Sabres scoring four on the Devils' defense and Martin Brodeur. Eep.
Cool SBN stuff:
Maple Leafs vs Sabres coverage (SBN's Event Page)
Maple Leafs vs Sabres preview (TSN's game preview)
Die By The Blade (SBN's Sabres blog)
