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Morgan Rielly knows how the thinking goes in some corners: The Maple Leafs would make themselves a stronger Stanley Cup contender if improvements were made to the defence corps.

Entering his sixth season with the Leafs, that kind of thought puts a chip on the shoulder of the 24-year-old.

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“You hear the reports or whatever you want to call it, about the doubts in the blue line and you take that personally and you use it as motivation,” Rielly said on Thursday at the MasterCard Centre during the Leafs’ first day of training camp.

“We believe in ourselves as a D corps, we think we can get better and we think we can be elite. There is room for improvement, things we can get better at, but we have confidence.

“It’s up to us to improve as a group and work hard to be the best we can be because we believe in ourselves. We take it as a compliment from (general manager) Kyle (Dubas) and the coaching staff of keeping us together and now it’s on us to prove we are capable of being a very good back end.”