ANOTHER FINE GAME BY THE LEAFS

For the second time in three nights the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers needed extra time to finish their games, and the Leafs came out on top for the second game in a row.

In the season series between these two clubs, the Leafs have won three of four games, and have earned 7 out of a possible eight points, which is very nice. Each team has at least won one game and has also lost at least one game in each others’ city. In the three previous games, the Leafs have not scored a goal in the first two periods of play against the Rangers, and their lone loss against them was a shutout.

That trend of not scoring in the first forty minutes continued tonight, but once again the Leafs prevailed and won the game 2-1 in a shootout. All four games this season were real good ones.

Coming into the game, the Rangers had gone through a lot, most notably the coaching change, as Tom Renney was fired, and John Tortorella was hired. You could also throw in the Rangers’ horrible losing streak on the road, as they have gone 0-7-1 in their past eight games, with just eight goals. That can be updated to 0-8-1, and nine goals now. This Rangers’ team is in real danger of missing the playoffs and came into this game two points up on ninth place Carolina. And tomorrow the Rangers face off against the Panthers in Florida, a team that was just one point behind the Rangers, but now two.

So you would think the Rangers wanted this game real bad, and they did with their strong fore-checking, and their star players actually played. Except for Scott Gomez who was floating around the ice and looked real lost.

The New York pursuit for the puck was very strong, and that translated into excellent scoring opportunities but Vesa Toskala put in another solid effort of goaltending for the second straight night and stopped 31 shots. Both he and Henrik Lundqvist kept their teams in the game, and came up with very timely saves. In the first period Toskala was the busier goalie of the two and had to stop 10 quality shots, compared to Lundqvist who easily turned aside three shots.

Lundqvist did looked shaky to start the game, as a weak shot on a bad angle beat him through his pad and the post, but the puck stopped short right before the goal line, and was promptly cleared.

The Rangers had a carousel running out of their bench, as you wouldn’t see line combinations repeated more than once in the first, and that didn’t stop throughout the night.

The second period continued with a strong pace just like the first and provided for some real energetic hockey. Too bad only the Rangers had that energy as their offense was clicking and had plenty of prolonged rushes in the Toronto zone. If the Leafs were to have some sort of a rush, it was quickly erased by the Rangers’ defense. The Toronto defense looked slow at times, especially when they tried to clear their own zone.

Midway through the period the Rangers scored on a power play, and Wade Redden blasted home a shot from the point, that was screened nicely by Chris Drury. That goal by Redden was just his third of the year, and first since October tenth of last year. Considering his salary, the Rangers have paid Redden about 1.75 million dollars a goal. And they say Glen Sather has done a terrific job with the Rangers.
Right after that, both teams picked up their level of play and the game got faster, and the Leafs’ Dominic Moore came real close to tying the game on a beautiful chip pass from Jason Blake, but the pad save by Lundqvist was even nicer.

But the Rangers came right back, and somehow Toskala kept the puck out on a mad scramble, and was just getting pieces of the puck as the Ranger players couldn’t get a real got shot off.

Going into the third period, the Leafs had to finish the game without Jeff Finger who injured his wrist or hand while blocking a shot, and were without John Mitchell since the first period also with an injury. Of the five career goals scored by Mitchell, three have come against the Rangers.

Both teams continued their play from the first two periods, but midway through, the Leafs tied the game up. On a dump in by the Leafs that could’ve been covered up by Lundqvist, two Rangers defencemen played Mikhail Grabovski who then passed to a wide open Nik Hagman, and he curled out in front of the net and snapped a wicked shot over Lundqvist’s shoulder.

Hagman is on pace to at least come close to matching his career high 27 goals from last year, and has 19 this year, and five in his last eight games.

Both teams played an offensive minded game the rest of the way, but with fewer shots on goal.

Overtime didn’t solve anything, but could’ve, as Nik Kulemin had a breakaway, but was stopped with no rebound. The rangers had their chances to, such as the two on one, but didn’t get a shot off as Jason Blake worked hard on the back check and prevented a shot from getting off.

In the shootout, Kulemin was the only scorer, and Toskala did the rest by stopping all three Rangers shooters, and capped off the win with a crowd pleasing glove save on New York’s leading scorer, Nikolai Zherdev.

This game also saw Markus Naslund get into his second career fight with Ian White, and Naslund put up a sad effort and knew he would’ve got smacked, and held onto White’s jersey.

The struggles continue for Mikhail Grabovski, who has scored just once in 23 games, and has zero goals in his last ten games before tonight’s game. He is trying to do too much offensively and defensively and that showed when he took a stupid hooking penalty in the third for no reason in the New York zone. Luckily for him, the Leafs killed that penalty.



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