The Toronto Maple Leafs wannabes headed home from their two-game Prospects Showdown in Montreal on Sunday, having earned a split following a fight-filled 4-1 victory over the hometown Canadiens before a packed house at the Bell Centre.
The win came after they lost 4-3 to the Ottawa Senators prospects on Saturday.
Winger Ryan Tverberg, 23, who has spent the past two seasons with the AHL Marlies, scored twice in the third for the Leafs, including an unassisted empty-netter. His first goal, roofing a loose puck from in tight, gave Toronto a 3-1 lead after Filip Mesar had tallied for the Habs late in the second period.
Centre Luke Haymes, the highly sought-after undrafted NCAA free agent who also scored in Saturday’s game, one-timed a cross-ice pass during a 5-on-3 power-play in the second period to make it 2-0, after winning a faceoff to set up Ryan Kirwan’s opening goal in the first.
While Leafs coach John Gruden felt Saturday’s lineup team didn’t show the urgency it needed until the third period when it turned a 3-0 deficit into a one-goal game, he said that wasn’t an issue on Sunday. For obvious reasons.
“I thought the urgency was really good,” he said. “We knew it was going to be a great environment. It’s fun for these guys to get in front of 18,000 people and play. It gives them that excitement and kind of what it’s like to play in an NHL rink.”
Vyacheslav Peksa, a two-year veteran of the ECHL, was solid in net for the Leafs and drew praise afterwards from Gruden.
“He looked really comfortable in net and made some really big saves every time we got hemmed in our own end,” said Gruden, the Marlies head coach, of the Leafs’ sixth-round pick in 2021. “We bent but we didn’t break and he had a lot to do with that … We wouldn’t have been able to win that game without him.”
The Maple Leafs’ main training camp opens on Thursday.