Know Your Enemy: Drastically-Different, Vastly-Improved Maple Leafs Will Be Much Tougher Opponent For Sabres This Season

And here at TheHockeyNews.com , as part of an off-season series of articles, we're focusing on the Sabres' Eastern Conference opponents in a series called "Know Your Enemy". In these files, we're examining how Buffalo fared against every East team last year, and how they're likely to do against those teams this season. And in this penultimate file in the series, we're spotlighting the Toronto Maple Leafs .

No team made more changes than the Maple Leafs did this summer, restocking their entire third and fourth lines of forwards, and adding 2026 No. 1 overall draft pick Gavin McKenna and former Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Darren Raddysh and longtime Florida Panthers star goalie Sergei Bobrovsky . Here's this columnist's personal point of view on how the Sabres will fare against Toronto this season:

CAN THE SABRES BEAT THIS TEAM? The Sabres didn't lose to the Maple Leafs in regulation time last season – nor should they have, as Toronto completely cratered as one of the NHL's worst teams. And by the time Buffalo took on the Leafs for their final game in mid-March, the Buds were a shell of themselves.