‘Fearful’ Leafs Host Sabres at BetLM

‘Fearful’ Leafs Host Sabres

TORONTO – Fear Fac­tor might be a fun TV show to watch, but it’s no fun when fear has an iron-clad grip on your hockey club.

Maple Leafs coach Randy Car­lyle said after his team’s morn­ing skate on Sat­ur­day that “the fear fac­tor around our group is very high right now.”

The Leafs will have to quickly over­come that fear if they want to put an end to a franchise-record 11-game home los­ing streak when they play host to the Buf­falo Sabres at the Air Canada Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day night.

“When you play with fear, it doesn’t allow you to do the things that come nat­u­rally to you. The puck bounces off your stick, you are fear­ful of that. You put a stick on the oppo­si­tion and you are fear­ful that the ref­eree is going to call the penalty. There’s all those lit­tle games within the game, but you can’t play the game with total fear. At times we’ve dis­played that we’re too apprehensive.”

The Leafs really shouldn’t be play­ing with any fear now that their sea­son is a total wash and they have noth­ing else to lose. But their goal­tend­ing sit­u­a­tion prob­a­bly won’t help their con­fi­dence much.

Ben Scrivens was an emer­gency call-up from the Mar­lies after it was learned Jonas Gus­tavs­son, who was injured dur­ing warmups for the Leafs game on Thurs­day night against the Philadel­phia Fly­ers, still wasn’t ready to play. So it will be two Mar­lies ‘keep­ers man­ning the net when Toronto (33–36-9) tries to put a dent in the play­off hopes of ninth-place Buf­falo (38–30-10).

The Sabres lost 5–3 to the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins on Fri­day night to fall into the ninth spot in the East.

It is unclear whether Scrivens, who played in eight games for the Leafs in Novem­ber, going 2–4-1 with a .904 save per­cent­age and a 2.96 goals-against aver­age, will start or if Jussi Ryn­nas will get the call after he started in net against the Fly­ers and was shelled 7–1.

It appears from the way the morn­ing skate shaped up that Scrivens will be start­ing, but Car­lyle always likes to keep his cards close to his chest when it comes to nam­ing his start­ing goal­tender so it can’t be said for sure.

“If I’m going tonight, I’m not sure, but if I am I’ll be ready,” said Scrivens who was in net for the Mar­lies on Fri­day night dur­ing a 5–4 over­time win in Rochester. “My focus last night was on beat­ing Rochester. We had a gutsy over­time win and then I hopped in a car and came up here.”

Scrivens said he learned of the call-up on Fri­day night.

Defence­man Mike Komis­arek will be back on the blue line for the Leafs after being a healthy scratch the past three games and Cody Fran­son could be the odd man out.

The Leafs have just three games remain­ing in their sched­ule after tonight’s game, with two being on the road. They wrap up their sea­son in Mon­treal on April 7.

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