THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC CITY
Leafs come from behind to get second straight win over Habs
The Maple Leafs’ training camp is into its final week, but roster battles are expected to endure well into the opening few weeks of the regular season.
Not that Wednesday did a whole lot to clear things up. The bottom four of the eight-man blue line corps is expected to include Connor Carrick, Calle Rosen, Andreas Borgman and Travis Dermott, though there’s a possibility that incumbent depth blueliner Martin Marincin finds his way into the mix.
And three of those defencemen — Carrick, Borgman and Marincin — had goals Wednesday night in the Leafs’ 4-2 come-from-behind win over Montreal in Quebec City.
The Canadiens jumped to a 2-0 first-period lead on goals by Jonathan Drouin and Andrew Shaw, but the Leafs defencemen took over the game in the second, with Borgman’s goal at 17:20 holding up as the winner.
Andreas Johnsson scored the other goal early in the third.
The other main battle in camp is for the fourth-line centre job, where Miro Aaltonen appears to be the frontrunner, but Leafs head coach Mike Babcock insists Dominic Moore, Eric Fehr and Ben Smith remain in the running.
“I don’t know anything to tell you except they’re going to play and I’m going to watch,” Babcock said “And then we’re going to do it again, and do it another time. And by then we probably still won’t know what’s going on.
“But we’ll have to submit a lineup before (next Wednesday’s season opener in Winnipeg), 23 men. And then over 10 (regular-season) games or so, then we’ll probably get it right after that.
“How’s that?”