Leafs' rookie sensations dominate in home-ice debut

Move asideTeam North America, the Toronto Maple Leafs are creating amillennialsensation of their own.

Playing on home ice for the first time, rookieMitch Marnersniped home his first NHL goalmoments after fellowrookie Connor Brown scored for hisseventh point in nine NHL games dating back to last season.

Marner's parents were at the Air Canada Centre to watch the game, though only one of them got to see their son's milestone achievement live.

RookieNikita Zaitsev also quietly picked up his first NHL point, an assist on the Marner goal.

This comes just one game after 2016first overall draft pick Auston Matthews set an NHL record with fourgoals in his NHL debut on Wednesday.

And the records kept coming Saturday, as the Leafs became the first team since the NHL expansion to have rookies score the first six goals of the season.

Fresh off being named No. 100 on the Leafs' Top 100 players of all-time list, James van Riemsdyk ended the rookie scoring streak by pottingToronto's third goal of the first period.

It was his first goal since changing his jersey number, the only player on the team forced to make a swap after the Leafs retired the numbers of 17 playersearlier in the evening in a centennial season ceremony.

Just how exciting was the first period?

Well, the Leafs haven't scored threegoals in the first frame since last January.

The Leafs have no less than six players on their roster that qualify as rookies (that's players 25 and underwho have not played more than 25 NHL games in any previous seasons) including Marner, Zaitsev, Matthews, Brown, William Nylander and Zach Hyman. Each player has picked up at least one point in the Leafs' first two games of the season.

Toronto finished the evening with a notch in the 'W' column, defeating Boston 4-1.

Chalk one up for the youth movement.