The three-game sweep of the NHL from Saturday night starts in Toronto where the Maple Leafs found the back of the net and won a game in defeating the Boston Bruins, 4-1.
The Leafs are getting scoring from their rookies with Mitchell Marner picking up a goal in the win.
“It’s pretty exciting. Every kid dreams of that puck going into the back of the net,” Marner said. “Especially doing it in front of your hometown crowd. It’s something I think I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
Frederik Andersen picked up the win on the strength of 24 saves in a solid effort to stop the Bruins.
“I worked hard the last few days in practice with [Maple Leafs goaltending coach Steve Briere],” Andersen said. “I think that had to do with how I played on the ice.”
Connor Brown, James van Riemsdyk and Milan Michalek also scored for Toronto.
The Bruins started Anton Khudobin and he made 20 saves in the loss; David Pastrnak was the lone goal scorer for Boston.
“I thought we had the game totally in control, and then we got careless and played run-and-gun a little bit. I don’t want to take anything away from our team because our team did lots of good things. But our team obviously needs [to know] how to better take care of the puck. And we’ll learn how to do that,” Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said of his team’s effort.
In Sunrise, the Florida Panthers are off to a 2-0-0 start courtesy of a 4-1 win of the winless Detroit Red Wings.
Jonathan Marchessault had a goal and three points in the win.
“We’ve got a lot of new guys on our team and to see the way we played the first two games for six periods, I thought we played great hockey,” Panthers coach Gerard Gallant said. “It’s good to see. I’m sure they’re real excited and real happy. It was two good wins for us.”
Aleksander Barkov, Colton Sceviour and Vincent Trocheck had the other goals for the Panthers.
Darren Helm picked up the only Wings goal.
Roberto Luongo made 21 saves on the night for the win and Petr Mrazek made 34 stops in the loss but played a solid game despite the goals.
“We got on our heels early, gave up those two goals, but we can’t keep giving up free opportunities like that,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s nonsensical. We spent most of the first and second not being quickest to the puck. Their second guy beat our second guy to too many pucks. We’ve got to be way better than that.”
The San Jose Sharks are now 2-0-0 after a 3-2 win Saturday over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Patrick Marleau scored an empty-net goal with 34 seconds left to give the Sharks a 3-1 lead before the Jackets’ Josh Anderson scored just 11 seconds later.
“Good, sloppy road win. We’ll take it,” San Jose coach Peter DeBoer said.
Mikkel Boedker and Joel Ward had the other goals for San Jose and Martin Jones made 27 saves in the win.
Columbus is now 0-2-0 on the new season and while it is still early to be griping the stick too hard, it is not too late to start worrying about the effort.
Columbus’ Zach Werenski scored early in the third period to cut the deficit to 2-1.
“In the third period we definitely took it to another level,” Werenski said. “We have to do that the whole game, that’s all.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 35 saves in the losing effort.
“This is a game where [Bobrovsky] gives us a chance. We’re still having problems generating offense. This is a game if you turn it around you might find a way to win in the end,” Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella said.
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