NHL: Maple Leafs erupt, beat Sabres by a touchdown

The Toronto Maple Leafs opened up their offence in a big way on Friday, defeating the Buffalo Sabres 8-1 in pre-season action. 

William Nylander opened up the scoring, giving the Leafs a 1-0 advantage less than five minutes in. The Sabres tied the game up soon after, but that was it from their offence. 

Peter Holland scored his first of two goals in the game, and then Matt Hunwick found the back of the net twice in just 12 seconds. 

The Maple Leafs Twitter account was very excited going into the first intermission up 4-1. 

Kasperi Kapanen, Rich Clune and Jake Gardiner added second period goals. Mitch Marner, the Leafs top prospect, recorded two assists. 

Auston Matthews, who was expected to make his pro debut, will have to wait to don the blue and white. 

"Sooner or later, he's going to get in," said Leafs assistant Coach Jim Hiller before the game. "The lineups are day by day. They [World Cup players] went through a solid three weeks. It's a little break, a little down time. There are tons of games coming. They'll get a lot of ice time. They'll get in shortly."

He mentioned it was not a health issue.

Jets fly high over Oilers

The Winnipeg Jets scored four power-play goals Friday night to overpower the Edmonton Oilers 5-1 in pre-season play.

Adam Lowry, Joel Armia, Toby Enstrom, Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele, who also had three assists, scored for Winnipeg (2-1-0) as the Jets paired their power-play success with strong penalty killing from some of their youngsters, including No. 2 overall draft pick Patrik Laine.

The Oilers (2-2-0) started strong but didn't find the back of the net until late in the second period when Oscar Klefbom finally beat Jets netminder Michael Hutchinson, who had stopped 20 shots up to that point. The Jets were outshot 34-21 overall.

Edmonton had nine shots to Winnipeg's three when centre Lowry, parked in front of the net, connected off Blake Wheeler and Scheifele at 8:39 of the opening period on the Jets' first power play of the game.

The Oilers blew their chance to even things up a few minutes later, losing half their first power play to an interference call on defenceman Matthew Benning.

That also opened the door for the Jets again and this time, with just three seconds left in their second power play, Scheifele fed Armia, who beat Oilers goaltender Cam Talbot on a breakway.

Jets fans were pretty excited. 

Flames beat Canucks

Troy Brouwer had a goal and an assist and Brian Elliott was solid in net as the two former Blues led the Calgary Flames to 2-1 pre-season victory on Friday night over the Vancouver Canucks.

After helping St. Louis to the Western Conference final last year, both changed addresses over the summer — Brouwer as a free agent and Elliott via trade.

After Brouwer scored the only goal of the first period, Matthew Tkachuk knocked a rebound of a Brouwer deflection past Richard Bachman to put Calgary ahead 2-1 at 14:34 of the second.

It was the first pre-season goal for the Flames' sixth-overall pick from June's NHL draft. Sam Bennett, the third member of the line, added two assists for Calgary (2-2-0).

Guillaume Brisebois scored for Vancouver (1-1-1).

Earlier in the second, Calgary got a scare when Tkachuk left the ice and went straight to the Flames dressing room, appearing to have been injured when he got rocked hard into the boards by Canucks defenceman Joseph Labate, who got penalized for interference.

Avalanche, Kings trade twitter jabs

Sports teams are notorious for trying to be funny on twitter, but sometimes it actually works. Tonight, in anticipation of the Colorado Avalanche playing the Los Angeles Kings, both teams went a little Game of Thrones gif-crazy. 

You can head to Twitter to read up on their entire exchange, but here's a small snippet.

Glove problems

The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 1-0 in pre-season action, but the most exciting moment in that game was not the goal that was scored in the net, but the goal that was scored in the glove. 

When it's the pre-season, we can all laugh about something.