Alumni from two of the most storied franchises in hockey tangled at CAA Arena on Saturday, as the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs hit the ice, for a charity match-up.
Toronto skated to an 11-6 victory despite Montreal taking the edge in shots 40-28.
There was a flurry of goals in the first period, with Toronto taking a 5-3 lead after 15:00.
It was Montreal that opened the scoring though, with John LeClair beating J.S. Aubin just 38 seconds in.
Toronto tied it less than a minute later on Gary Leeman’s first of the night, putting a shot past Richard Richard Sévigny .
The Habs got back in front with two quick goals from Guy Carbonneau and Chris Nilan before Toronto rattled off four straight, including a pair from Nik Antropov, one from Wendel Clark and another from Leeman.
Leeman says the alumni are used to playing teams made up of local players, so facing-off against another group of alumni, makes things a little bit more competitive and adds to the atmosphere in the building.
That showed through in the second, as the pace and competitiveness picked up with, only three goals scored in total.
Antropov got his hat-trick for Toronto, with LeClair netting his second and Stephane Richer scoring his first of the game for Montreal.
Toronto held a 6-5 edge after the second.
The Leafs blew things open in the third, with two more quick ones to start the period, both courtesy of Paul Fergus.
Clark got another to stretch the Toronto lead to four, snapping a wrist shot past Sévigny on a breakaway, after a long feed from Dan Daoust.
Antropov added his 4th of the night at 8:35, then Mike Zigomanis buried a breakaway attempt as well, but Montreal managed to tack on another with Pierre Dagenais finishing a nice pass from Marc-Andre Bergeron to round out the scoring.
Montreal’s Jocelyn Lemieux tells Quinte News, it’s not as much about the result, as it is helping local organizations like the United Way of Hastings Prince Edward which benefited from funds raised at the events.
The total amount of money raised during the course of the night won’t be released until early next week.
