Leafs rookie delivers some ground & pound after dropping Thompson to the ice.

Fans of the Buffalo Sabres are not going to be happy about this one and to be perfectly honest you can't really blame them either. On Friday night Toronto Maple Leafs rookie Andrew Nielsen got a lot of attention after being a last minute addition to the preseason roster, but the attention he drew may have been for all of the wrong reasons. 

Nielsen started by getting the attention of the Buffalo Sabres and the Sabres fans in attendance at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York when he delivered a rather questionable hit to 20 year old Buffalo Sabres forward Tage Thompson. The hit was a clear blow from behind and even the most die hard of Maple Leafs' fans would be hard pressed to argue that Nielsen did not have plenty of time to pull up on the hit before drilling Thompson into the boards. Instead of pulling up however Nielsen followed through with the hit and it sent Thompson face first into the glass, something that left the young Sabres forward fuming. 

Thompson initially went to challenge Nielsen before thinking better of it but just a few seconds later as the puck moved up the middle of the ice Thompson once again approached Nielsen a piece of his mind. After some jaw jacking back and forth between the two young men they both decided to drop the gloves for a fight that honestly you can barely even call a fight. Yes both men got a fighting major but it was a lack of balance and not a flurry of punches that sent both men crashing down to the ice together, although the situation did not end there. 

Nielsen seeing a vulnerable Thompson on the ground beneath him, and likely losing his cool with his emotions running extremely high on one of the biggest nights of his young life, decided he wanted to deliver some additional punishment. Nielsen cocked back his right arm and delivered a huge shot that appeared to catch Thompson directly on the jaw and frankly Thompson is lucky that the officials on the ice appeared to miss it or he could have ended up with a lot more than just a fighting major. 

Understandably Thompson was once again furious and the fans in Buffalo were none to happy when the repay of the punch was shown on the big screen. I don't think it's enough to warrant a look from the National Hockey League's department of player safety but you have to believe that the Maple Leafs organization will give Nielsen a very stern talking to in regards to his reckless behavior on the ice. Of course all of this matters a lot less due to the fact that the incidents took place during a relatively meaningless preseason game but Nielsen could have easily found himself ejected none the less. If he were to exhibit that type of behavior in the regular season he could leave his team and his teammates in a bad position due to penalties or even a possible ejection and that's not the kind of stuff you want to see from a young rookie.

[pub]