After a 2-1-0 road trip, the Buffalo Sabres will be going for their third consecutive victory when they play the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs Tuesday night.
The Maple Leafs are coming off a 5-3 road loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday.
They have split two games since acquiring forwards Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari on Friday in a trade with the St. Louis Blues.
O’Reilly had an assist in his Maple Leafs debut in a 5-1 home victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday. Acciari scored a goal on Sunday.
The Maple Leafs, playing on consecutive days, used fatigue as an excuse for their performance in Chicago.
“We were clearly a very tired group from the start and made tired mistakes,” Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “(The Blackhawks) didn’t have a lot of chances or shots (on goaltender Ilya Samsonov), but they had clean looks and we didn’t do enough to support him.”
The Maple Leafs overcame a 3-1 deficit to tie the game in the third period, but they could not duplicate their win against Chicago last week.
“We didn’t play a good enough or smart enough game to make up for what we were lacking in energy,” Keefe said. “When you’re tired, you have to be really smart and structured and all of that, and some of the clean looks we gave up (Sunday) were the result of just not being smart.”
After dropping the opener of their Western road trip to the Los Angeles Kings that stretched their drought to 0-3-1, the Sabres defeated the Anaheim Ducks and the San Jose Sharks.
“Took us a little bit to get going after the break, but I feel like we’re kind of back in stride now,” Tage Thompson said. “That was a big road trip getting two out of three and now we just have to keep it rolling.”
In the 4-2 victory over the Sharks on Saturday, the Sabres snapped a 2-2 tie with two third-period goals.
Jeff Skinner scored the go-ahead goal at 9:52 of the third, assisted by Thompson, and Alex Tuch scored into an empty net.
“We finally decided to shoot a puck, and we did not through two periods,” Sabres coach Don Granato said.
“We made a lot of work for ourselves because we were unwilling to shoot a puck. We wanted to make a pretty play or a perfect play instead of just simple and hard. Upie (goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen) had to keep us in there for two periods, but I give our guys a lot of credit. They did what they needed to in the third.”
Luukkonen stopped two breakaways. He also used his blocker to deflect the puck late in the first period.
“UPL obviously kept us in it early,” said Skinner, who scored his 21st goal of the season and added an assist. “He made some really big stops, especially the one at the end of the first.”
Luukkonen, who made 25 of his 33 saves in the first two periods, likely will start in Toronto.
Samsonov, who returned Sunday after missing the game on Saturday because of illness, figures to start for Toronto.
Sabres defenseman Kale Clague left practice early Monday and limped down the tunnel to the locker room. Granato had no immediate update on his status.
–Field Level Media
