Fit Leafs take their show on the road
Leafs put some teeth into attack ahead of weekend dogfights Club ices healthy lineup for first time since opener Quinn and Co. are 4- 11-3 at HSBC Arena in Buffalo
The Maple Leafs go into this weekend with a completely healthy lineup since the first game of the season and they’ll need all the help they can get considering their destinations.
We’ll let you discuss whether a healthy Aki Berg is an upgrade or downgrade over Carlo Colaiacovo, but the Leafs enter road games against the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens with no injuries for the first time since the seven- minute mark of the first game when Mats Sundin went down with a fractured orbital bone. The Leafs would have recalled Colaiacovo today, but learned that Berg’s strained knee had surprisingly healed, making him fit to play tonight’s game against the Sabres. Mariusz Czerkawski, who has been out with a strained shoulder, has also been cleared to play, but will almost certainly be a healthy scratch.
Just a week after Halloween, the Leafs enter a couple of houses of horror in the HSBC Arena in Buffalo and the Bell Centre in Montreal. The Leafs have one of their worst road records against the Sabres in Buffalo, with a 2043- 6 mark for a .333 winning percentage. Since the Sabres moved to their new arena in 1996- 97, the Leafs are 4- 11- 3, with two of their wins coming in overtime. Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn often gets queried on why the Leafs have been so limp in Buffalo, but reckons he’d probably do something about it if he could explain it.
“ Since I’ve been around, boy they’ve competed hard against us,” Quinn said. “ In that playoff series the first year I was here ( 1999), I didn’t think we should have lost that one, but we did. Now whether that’s just because of a strong rivalry, I don’t know.”
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact a game against Toronto is almost a road game for the Sabres with all the Leaf fans who make the trip down the Queen Elizabeth Way for cheaper and more accessible tickets.
“ They respond well to it,” Quinn said. “ Their teams have always played with heart.”
Things aren’t that much better in Montreal, but the Leafs do have some better recent history there. They picked up a 3- 2 win at the Bell Centre Oct. 15 and were 2- 1 there in 2003- 04. But this will mark the second time the Leafs will have played the Canadiens in Montreal after having played the night before. The Leafs are 93-198-43 alltime in Montreal.
There was speculation, meanwhile, that Colaiacovo would be recalled for the Buffalo game and would have, but was not after Berg was declared healthy. There has been criticism the Leafs were pinching pennies by sending Colaiacovo back down and paying him a minor league salary, but saving money had nothing to do with the move. Saving cap space was the modus operandi with Colaiacovo. The Leafs have about $ 1.5 million ( U. S.) in cap space left and, like other teams, want to have as much cap space as possible when the March 9 trade deadline hits.
“( What we save) is worth a lot more on that day than it is today,” said Maple Leafs GM John Ferguson. The fact that the Leafs didn’t send down any of Matt Stajan, Kyle Wellwood, Alexander Steen or Staffan Kronwall, despite the fact they could have on their day off Wednesday, is indicative of how the Leafs see all of them as part of their group. They didn’t want to be shorthanded for practice today, nor did they want to alienate regular players by taking away at least a day of NHL pay.