Brian Burke Must Like What He Sees After Leafs Debut

Much has been made of how Toronto is going to look and play this season, and we were given several glimpses as to what that future may be.

Brian Burke has said that his team will be tougher to play against, and teams will hate having to come to the Air Canada Centre in fear of getting roughed up. Last night in the season opener, part of that goal may have been reached.

Sure enough, the team already won't step down from a fight. There were two  within the first eleven minutes of the contest. While fighting may not be an important part of hockey, its nice to see guys like Orr and Rosehill understand their roles on the team.

Komisarek was excited for this game as his old team met his new one, and he tossed his body around all night with both hits and blocked shots.

Toronto also appeared to be offensively tough, severely out-shooting Montreal 46-27. While the goals didn't add up as they might have liked, Toronto was in Montreal's end most of the night and looked sharp on several instances.

Burke has to enjoy those things. Not only is his team continuing the offense they showed last season but they appear ready for each challenge and seem to be tougher than they were a year ago.

Although Burke surely likes what he sees so far from his new club, not all was good from last night. Not only did they lose the contest, penalty killing was poor and their goaltending was pretty weak.

While Komisarek was excited to play his old team, it really got the best of him as he was in the box too many times. He managed to rack up 15 minutes in penalties, and on two of his penalties Toronto was scored on. Being physical and excited for games is great, but in the future he needs to tone it down to a degree so that his team isn't always down a man.

Poor penalty killing appears to have followed the team from last season, and so too it seems has poor goaltending. Aside from a few good saves late in the game, Toskala wasn't as sharp as he needed to be. While being in the box all night hurts, Toskala still needs to make those big saves to keep his team in the game.

Recap:

2 Things Burke Had To Like From Last Night

Overall Team Toughness: Great hits, fearless shot blocking, Orr and Rosehill showing they know their role on the team.

Offensively Sound: Had 46-27 advantage in shots, play was in Montreal's end most of the night, top two lines showed great chemistry, Stajan started season off with two goals.

2 Things Burke Had To Hate From Last Night

Poor penalty killing/defensive play: Komisarek with 15 minutes in penalties; cost team two goals, Beauchemin and Schenn looked lost on several plays, players pinched too far to make "big hits" leading to rushes.

Toskala Looked Shaky: Four goals on 27 shots, should have had two goals for sure, could have used more help though.

Leafs nation need not panic, and maybe they aren't. It was after all game one of the season, and some obvious kinks need to be worked out. While they did some things poorly, they did a lot of good things and it should make for an interesting season.

Defensive play and penalty killing should improve, as should goaltending as prized signing Jonas Gustavsson is waiting to steal the job from Toskala if need be. It appears Toskala doesn't have a short leash as his coach and general manager have shown their confidence in him. If his poor play continues though of course things will change.

One thing that will be interesting is to see where Kessel will fit in once he returns, because the top two lines certainly played like they deserve to be there. Other than that, the lineup should remain the same unless veterans fall out of favour; in which case Bozak, Hanson, Tlusty and Kulemin will deserve looks if their play elsewhere is great.

Hopefully returning players from injury are kept away because aside from maybe swapping Exelby for Finger, the team looks fine as it is and shouldn't be changed unless poor play disrupts that. (Finger may serve better with Marlies as cap relief would be better?)

In any case Burke has to like what he sees so far and has to like the problem of the surplus of players because it tells you what kind of team it is this year. Eventually it will be a much improved team compared to what we are used to and it should be an exciting season all around.