Sabres top Leafs at Heritage Classic in Hamilton

HAMILTON — Vinnie Hinostroza had two goals and an assist as the Buffalo Sabres defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-2 in the Heritage Classic outdoor game Sunday.

Peyton Krebs added two goals of his own for Buffalo (20-32-8), which got 36 stops from Craig Anderson. Tage Thompson added an empty netter.

Auston Matthews added to his NHL goal lead with his 45th of the season, while Ondrej Kase also scored for Toronto (37-17-5). The under-fire Petr Mrazek made 31 saves at a windy Tim Hortons Field.

Hinostroza snapped a 2-2 tie at 5:16 of the third when he fired a shot from a sharp angle in the corner for his 10th on a play Mrazek will desperately want back.

Krebs then made it 4-2 with 6:11 left with his sixth that trickled through Mrazek after the Leafs goaltender dislodged the net on a strange play that stood up after video review.

Thompson added a short-handed empty netter at with 2:25 left in regulation for his 24th.

Fans in attendance at the home of the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, which sits roughly 70 kilometres from Toronto and 100 kilometres from Buffalo, bundled up on a day where the temperature felt like -7 C when factoring in the wind chill for the 4 p.m. local time puck drop.

Crews had to clear snow off the ice a couple of times prior to warmups at the first NHL regular-season game in Steeltown since March 1994. But the flurries mostly subsided once the action got underway in front of a sellout crowd of 26,119.

The Leafs sported dark blue jerseys that pay homage to the Toronto Arenas – one of the franchise’s previous iterations that played from 1917 to 1919 – while the Sabres wore cream-coloured threads.

Toronto, which was booed off the ice at home following a 5-1 loss Buffalo on March 2 and sat 33 points on the