Alex Noren produced a flawless performance on another high-quality third day of the British Masters as he stormed into a three-shot lead at The Grove. Orlando Magic Jerseys . Leaderboard British Masters supported by Sky Sports Noren banished the memory of his closing double-bogey on Friday as he fired a six-under 66 without a single blemish on his card to take a commanding into the final day.Player of the day As good as Noren was, weve gone for Marcel Siem, who has had a rotten year by his standards with just two top-10 finishes all season and a dozen missed cuts. But he gave himself a great chance to rocket up the world rankings and the Race to Dubai as five birdies over the last six holes capped a superb 65. Former Ryder Cup player Peter Hanson surged into the mix with a 66 Star shotScott Jamiesons chip-in for birdie at 10 was an early candidate, but our leader Alex Noren trumped that with a second shot to the 12th described by Mark Roe as magnificent. His drive avoided dropping in the left fairway bunker by inches, but despite standing in the sand with the ball way above his feet, he made great contact and knocked it to 15 feet. Shame the birdie putt lipped out! That monster birdie putt at the last merits consideration as well. Watch NOW TV Watch Sky Sports for just ￡6.99. No contract. Biggest disappointmentObvious one - Beef! The fan favourite struggled to get going early on and turned in 37, and although he finally got a birdie putt to drop at 11, he stuffed his second in the drink at the next and double-bogeyed. He hit back with two birdies before dropping another shot at 16, and he parred in for a 73 which leaves him eight off the lead. Alex Noren will take a three-shot lead into the final round Story of round threeRichard Bland, still seeking his first European Tour win in his 395th start, got off to a cracking start as he extended his overnight lead with birdies at each of the first two holes, but a bogey at the fourth set him back and he was constantly scrambling to save par over the next few holes. Marcel Siem has the clubhouse lead at the British Masters after a third round 65. He joined Sarah Stirk at the SkyCart The veteran journeyman could not get out of more trouble at the 12th, although he finally got some more red on his card with a nice putt for a four at the long 15th before doing well to pitch and putt from over the back of the 18th green to salvage a 69 and stay well within striking distance of the leader.With Bland struggling, Noren seized his chance to take control of the tournament and, after picking up an early birdie at the second, he added another at the sixth before beginning the back nine with a three which took him into the outright lead. Andrew Johnston struggled to get going early on and slipped down the leaderboard The Swede, twice a winner on the European Tour this season, affected a sublime up and down from thick rough at the long 15th, and he converted a solid approach to the 17th to get to 15 under par - three clear of the chasing pack.Noren could not go at the final green in two after bunkering his drive, but he atoned for a poor third by rolling in a remarkable 50-foot putt for his sixth birdie of the day, putting him in pole position for a seventh career title. Andrew Johnston struggled to get going early on and slipped down the leaderboard His compatriot Peter Hanson also kept a bogey off his card as the former Ryder Cup star moved smoothly to 12 under with a five-birdie 66, and he shares second with Bernd Wiesberger (67), Richard Sterne (67) and Tommy Fleetwood (68).Siem held the clubhouse lead for some time after his remarkable finish, the German bouncing back from a bogey at the 12th to birdie five of the final six holes, and he should have made it six as he missed out at the long 15th. Noren has already won twice on the European Tour this season Lee Westwood continued to produce his best golf for some time and will look to put early pressure on Noren after a bogey-free 67 lifted him alongside Siem on 11 under, with his former Ryder Cup team-mate Graeme McDowell one further back.McDowell made great strides up the leaderboard with two opening birdies followed by three in a row around the turn, but the putts dried up for the 2010 US Open champion and his frustration was evident when he made a mess of the last and signed off with a scrappy six. As for Beef? Well, hell still draw huge galleries on the final day despite plummeting down the leaderboard to eight under par, and eight strokes behind Noren. You can watch Liverpool v Man Utd, plus Englands tour of Bangladesh and the British Masters on Sky Sports. Upgrade now and enjoy six months at half price! Also See: British Masters leaderboard Donald wins Pick the Pin Fitzpatrick slow and steady Golf live on Sky Sports Timofey Mozgov Magic Jersey . Bryce Harper? He also came into Wednesday without a long ball and hadnt driven in a run. He was hitting .160, had nearly three times as many strikeouts as hits and was dropped to seventh in the batting order. Terrence Ross Jersey . Bryant underwent an operation in December to correct an irregular heartbeat. His season ended with four games left because of a rapid heartbeat, a condition he has known about for several years and had been treated for in the past.ST. PAUL, Minn. – Life just got a lot harder for the suddenly banged up Toronto Maple Leafs. Already struggling to produce a consistent product on the ice and facing a whole whack of games on the road this month, Toronto learned Friday that it will be without two of its top three centres and third-highest scoring winger, all for a good chunk of January. Joffrey Lupul will miss the next month with a lower body injury. Nazem Kadri, also out with a lower body injury, will be sidelined for 7-10 days. And Peter Holland will sit week to week with an upper body issue. All three stem from a Wednesday night win in Boston and will ultimately test the depth that defined the club’s offseason. “It’s been a strength of our team all year,” Lupul said of the club’s depth last month. “You never want to anticipate injuries or anything, but at some point in time there’s going to be guys that go down and this year it certainly looks like we have the depth throughout our lineup of guys that can step up and play in those situations and get offence and play in critical situations.” Though they fell in Minnesota, Friday’s effort was actually a reasonable start. “We cannot complain with the effort,” said head coach, Randy Carlyle, after a 3-1 loss to the Wild. “We’re not happy with the result, but I think that the effort was there. If we continue along those lines and we play that brand of hockey we’ll give ourselves a chance to win some games.” The Leafs actually won a rare possession battle, spending large amounts of the night in the Minnesota end while holding their opponents to just 29 shots. It was just the 11th time all season that they’ve held an opponent under 30 shots and second in as many games. Much of that, players said afterward, was due to improved exits from the defensive zone, a facet of the game the club has been pushing to improve in recent days (more on that below). They also didn’t allow near as many quality opportunities from those areas of the ice deemed dangerous. “Hopefully this is the style of play that we adopt and we feel that we can execute at that level and it all just starts in our own end in our puck recoveries and defensive zone coverage,” Carlyle said. “We weren’t as porous. They didn’t hold us in the offensive zone. They had a few flurries, but they weren’t dominating us on the possession time in our zone.” The highest scoring team in hockey, it was rare to see the Leafs held in check as they were by Darcy Kuemper and the Wild and it will be indeed curious to see how this group manages offensively in the coming weeks without Lupul and Kadri. Lupul led the club with 12 even-strength points in December, trailed closely behind by Kadri, who had six such goals and 11 points in 15 games. They are also the team’s two best possession players by some margin and form a dangerous secondary threat beyond Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk. That will mean more pressure on that top line to produce, specifically at even-strength where they’ve often failed to muster any consistent magic. It will also likely mean more ice-time for the likes of Kessel, van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak. Kessel and Bozak, in fact, pushed nearly 26 minutes on Friday, van Riemsdyk just a tad behind despite requiring repairs in the third period for the damage of a puck to the face. Toronto faced a similar challenge last season with injuries; a year ago last month they played 12 games without Bozak and the since departed Dave Bolland. The club went 5-5-2 in that stretch, surviving some without two of their top three centres. Centre ice will again be tested and likely exposed with Kadri and Holland on the shelf. Beyond Bozak, Toronto had Daniel Winnik, Trevor Smith and Greg McKegg line up in the other three spots down the middle against the Wild, a very limited trio offensively. What the Leafs have now that they didnt under similar circumstance last year is versatile depth across the roster. The likes of Winnik, Mike Santorelli, Leo Komarov, David Booth and later, Richard Panik, were added to help bolster what had been a three-line hockey team, one that was weak on options in case of injury. In this case, the Leafs will need those like Panik to produce with an increase in opportunity. Unexpectedly productive offensively in the early months the club will also require further contributions from Winnik, Santorelli and Komarov and something more from Booth, who has just one goal in 18 games. More generally they’ll require more of the structured acts that Friday brought. And they’ll have to do away from their Toronto confines, playing nine of the next 11 on the road. Five Points 1. Breakouts One point for improvement during a five-game trip that concludes Saturday for the Leafs in Winnipeg is how they break the puck out of the defensive zone. There’d been a tendency, as Cody Franson observed earlier in the week, for the five players on the ice to become too spread out. “I think it’s more puck support,” Carlyle said before Friday’’s game. Tracy Mcgrady Magic Jersey. “I think we’ve been guilty far too often of leaving people high and dry. I think everybody’s got the same mantra in the league now that you have to have four or five guys around the puck. You make those short little passes, release passes away from pressure. “We know everybody’s forechecking with three guys and then the fourth guy is their defenceman usually pushing the walls. That hasn’t changed. That’s been probably a staple in the NHL here for the last four or five years. I think that’s one of the issues that we’ve had to deal with and we’re continually trying to improve in that area.” They did so against the Wild. Key to outshooting Minnesota – just the 10th time that’s happened for the Leafs this season – was improvement in those exits from the defensive zone. “I thought we had a lot of clean breakouts and we seemed to skate the puck in a lot from our end to their end,” Winnik said. “You have cleaner breakouts and quick breakouts and you’re obviously going to spend less time in your end.” 2. Discipline & Officials Discussed in the visiting dressing room after defeat was the club’s lacking discipline. Winnik’s third period slash on Ryan Suter sprung the Wild to their third and final goal, a one-time power-play blast from Mikko Koivu. “I’ve got to keep my cool in that situation, especially the time of the game and how we were kind of coming on there,” Winnik said. “It’s just a dumb play by me.” Phil Kessel was later whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, chirping the officials after a slash from Matt Cooke went unpunished. The Leafs were none too pleased though earlier in the evening with the officiating. Mike Santorelli appeared to score the game’s first goal on a power-play, but the marker was called back shortly thereafter. It was ruled that David Clarkson interfered with Kuemper in front. Carlyle contends that he was pushed by Wild defender Jared Spurgeon. “They deemed that he interfered with the goaltender,” Carlyle said. “Obviously from our standpoint and watching the video he was pushed from behind by Jared Spurgeon. Obviously they saw it different. You don’t win those ones.” 3. Life in the New Year It’s a well-known theory among coaches that the league tightens up after the New Year. Why? “I just think that’s the nature in an 80-game schedule,” Carlyle said Thursday. “I think there’s only so many more points made available and that the intensity ramps up. Everybody’s going to preach it. We’re preaching it so every other team is going to be doing the same thing.” 4. Video Session Like any team around the league, the Leafs commonly look to video to prescribe fixes to troubled spots of their game. They’ve had some particularly painstaking sessions of late, the team sliding with five losses in the previous seven games. “The coaches aren’t trying to blame anybody or point players out or anything like that,” Morgan Rielly said, “they’re just trying to help the team and just trying to make the team better. You can’t take it personally, you’ve just got to worry about getting better and try to help out your teammates.” Rielly says what often looks like the right play on ice doesn’t end up being the case in review on video. “I think when you watch it on tape it looks a lot easier than it actually is playing,” he said. “There might be a play where on tape it looks kind of stupid, but during the game but you might think it’s the right play…you’ve just got to learn from your mistakes.” 5. Video Session II “It’s definitely teaching,” Korbinian Holzer said of the video work. “You have to show the bad things to ensure that everybody gets the message. It’s more like a teaching lesson; you sit in there, you listen. We got shown all the things that we’ve got to do differently, the stuff we didn’t do right in the game and how we can make it better.” “There are games,” he continued, “where you think it was a bad game and then you watch the video and it’s like oh it wasn’t that bad. And there are games where it didn’t feel so bad and you watch the video and it’s disgusting. There are definitely some games where you watch it on the video and it’s tough to watch. I bet that’s how the coaches feel too.” In addition to group sessions, Toronto’s coaching staff also holds individual video meetings with players on the regular. Stats-Pack 25:48 – Ice-time for Phil Kessel against the Wild, a season-high. 6-2-2 – Leafs record when outshooting the opponent. 11- Number of times the Leafs have held an opponent under 30 shots this season. 46-42 – Possession advantage for the Leafs on Friday. 8-4-1 – Leafs record versus the Western Conference. Special Teams Capsule PP: 1-4 Season: 20.7% (9th) PK: 2-3 Season: 82.3% (12th) Quote of the Night “It’s just a dumb play by me.” -Daniel Winnik, on the third period penalty that led to Minnesota’s third goal. Up Next The Leafs conclude their five-game road trip in Winnipeg on Saturday. ' ' '