Leafs-Sabres: After Five Games in Five Nights, It's Miller Time for the Buds

With Colton Orr playing limited minutes on the fourth line and Jay Rosehill and Mike Brown out of the lineup, the rough stuff we’ve been privy to was unsurprisingly absent.

While the Leafs rested most of their starting defensive-core aside from Mike Komisarek and Luke Schenn, the Sabre’s went with 16 players from their regular roster and goalie Ryan Miller in their first preseason game.

Miller was 41-18-8 last season and is the monster between the pipes for this Sabres team. He looked sharp in his period and a half of play stopping all nine shots by Toronto.

Toronto's own Monster Jonas Gustavsson patrolled the ice between the pipes for the Buds.

Leafs Note: First time in the NHL Keith Aulie and Tyler Myers got to look across the ice at each other wearing different colors instead of beside each other wearing the same jersey. (WJC they played together with Team Canada).

Early in the first, on a nice bank pass from Nikolai Kulemin, Mikhail Grabovski who had lots of speed through the neutral zone broke in two on one and took the quick wrist shot instead of passing, but rang the puck off the goal post behind Miller.

Gustavsson was busy in the first but only allowed one goal (stopping 12 of 13 shots) on a seeing eye slap shot from Buffalo’s Andrej Sekera which rang off both posts before nestling into the netting.

Buffalo, 1-0, and again the Leafs gave up the first goal of the game. (52 of 82 last season, and yes, I know mention this every article!)

This is a habit the Leafs must shake.

Nazem Kadri took a triping penalty in the offensive zone, something that drives coaches nuts!

Leafs would kill off the penalty without any damage, and overall even with all the different faces the Leafs special teams have been working well on both sides of the puck.

During the intermission Christian Hanson said, "I feel as though I have a little more experience coming in this year," when asked about how camp has gone so far for him. Hanson has looked good, I almost wrote him off as a possible name on the final roster, but he is slowly swaying my opinion and continued throughout this game.

Buffalo note: Zack Kassian’s had a few flashes of brilliance displaying some patience with the puck and made some good heads up passes.

Kadri was on the rush when he made a pass through the middle of the ice turning the puck over just inside the Buffalo blueline which led to a two-on-one the other way for Buffalo and Tyler Ennis finished the play beating Gustavsson. Buffalo, 2-0.

The more ice-time Kadri gets in this preseason, the more I feel he is going to start this season down with the Marlies, whereas many had him penciled in as the second or third line center on October's starting roster.

Buffalo decided to swap out their star goalie Miller after letting him play a period and a half of shutout hockey, and brought in 22-year-old Swedish goalie Jhonas Enroth and as any fair Euchre player the Leafs followed suit, bringing in Jussi Rynnas.

No sooner had Rynnas had sat down for a cup of coffee between the pipes Rob Niedermayer (a good new veteran addition for Buffalo) slipped the puck between his arm and his body. Buffalo, 3-0.

With only 7:30 remaining in the second, the Leafs had only one shot on goal, and would have only two, but they made the second one count.

When with under two minutes left in the second, Nikolai Kulemin snapped the puck up in top shelf blocker-side on Enron after a nice face-off win by Grabovski. Buffalo, 3-1.

Leafs have only given up one goal in 18 times short-handed during the preseason and were perfect this evening.

Just before the midway mark of the third Armstrong took a good shot in the face to draw a penalty, though the Leafs failed to capitalize. They were subsequently rewarded with another power play as Paul Gaustad flipped the puck over the glass and Colby Armstrong had a good chance to bring the Leafs within one goal but couldn’t beat the sprawling Enron. Then with just over four minutes left they would get one more chance on the PP but again fail to beat Enron again. Leafs 0 for 4 on the PP.

Rynnas played well while with a young defense-core in front of him and a lot of peppering in the third from the Sabre’s allowing only one goal through his period and a half of work.

While down 3-1 and with just over a minute to play in the third the Leafs pulled Rynnas hoping to pull off the miracle and Jesse Blacker who had another good game came close to bringing the Leafs with in on but the come back would not be as the last whistle would sound to finalize the score at 3-1, Buffalo.

Leafs are 2-2-1 after five back-to-back preseason games.

Monday these teams will meet at the ACC after some well-needed rest for the Blue and White.