Taking their act to the Nation’s Capital

By Paul Bruno

The Leafs head out tonight to renew hostilities with their provincial rivals from Ottawa, in an attempt to snap their current three game losing streak.

Much of the talk locally centers around Toronto’s inability to get off to a good start and that will be tested as the Sens usually come out of the gate very well on their home ice.

The other notable topic is more line juggling by the Leafs. Apparently, Phil Kessel will now be joined by Matt Stajan and Alexei Ponikarovsky on the top line in another effort to find a decent top scoring unit.

What we will probably get, are a couple of fights, featuring the respective heavyweights to begin the proceedings. Once the puck is dropped after that, it will be interesting to see if these clubs match up as closely as they did in their early season encounter, which the Sens won by a 2-1 score, at the Air Canada Centre..

Vesa Toskala will get the nod in goal for Toronto because it appears as though he is playing his best hockey of the young season in his last two appearances and Jonas Gustavsson struggled his last time out. As far as the goalie rotation goes, it has had to be a little different in Toronto. On other teams, it’s win and you stay in, while with the Leafs, it has been whoever stinks the least, gets the start,  in recent games.

Pundits are pointing to the fact that Toronto is 26th in the league, as far as goals scored and saying that this team just isn’t that talented.

We dispute that point by noting that the only significant loss to the Leaf offense, from last year is Nik Antropov, who scored 28 goals last year, including his time with the Rangers.

With virtually the same forward complement the Leafs were 10th in the league in goals scored last season.

The fact is that three of last year’s four returning 20-goal scorers, Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman and Mikhail Grabovski, have combined for a  grand total of three even strength goals through the team’s first 18 games.

Alexei Ponikarovsky is the lone bona fide goal-scorer, with seven goals, who is scoring at a better pace than last year’s team leaders.

This year they can also point to the addition of Phil Kessel and a rejuvenated Lee Stempniak and an outsider can make the case that the offense should be at least as goods as it was a year ago.

When your scorers aren’t producing, your team is going nowhere. This team has players who are capable.

Their time to produce is long overdue.