Below is an excerpt from the TSN game review of the Maple Leafs 6-3 win over the hapless/sad sack Canadiens:
Mikhail Grabovski is building a pretty strong case to start being considered the top player on the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The latest evidence came on a night where his former team wasn’t showing him much love.
Grabovski had a goal and an assist during Toronto’s 6-3 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday and clearly drew the ire of ex-teammates Sergei Kostitsyn and Saku Koivu.
Both players went after him during the third period. No one involved seemed too interested in sharing the exact details of what happened, but Habs coach Guy Carbonneau indicated that Grabovski might have said something that got a couple of his former teammates upset.
“I don’t really care about what he thinks or what he said,” said Carbonneau. “He’s playing well. Good for him.”
That’s an understatement.
Grabovski has six goals and two assists in the last four games and seems to have found all kinds of chemistry on a line with Niklas Hagman and Nikolai Kulemin. The skilled Belarussian had three goals in 27 career games with Montreal over the last two seasons and now has seven in 15 games with the Maple Leafs, who acquired him over the summer in a trade.
“He’s been our best player for two weeks,” said Leafs coach Ron Wilson. “He’s been a dominant player. That’s why he’s got seven goals now.”
The 24-year-old is thriving in Toronto, where he’s getting much more of an opportunity than he was able to get on a Habs team with a plethora of skilled forwards.
