The Leafs get more practice at coming from behind
January 6th, 2010 | by jays1992 |
No fewer than 21 times this season, the Leafs have fallen behind by two goals to start a game. However, for a seventh time they erased that deficit and came all the way back to defeat the visiting Florida Panthers. It remains an act that is getting more and more difficult to watch, but at least there was a happy ending on this night.
This was an important win for a desperate club that is trying to breathe some life into their fading playoff hopes.
By the 10 minute mark of the opening frame, Jonas Gustavsson was beaten by a couple of Bryan McCabe slapshots. We have seen that before, but mostly when McCabe was wearing the Blue and White. In fact, he added to his career record of most goals by a defenseman at the Air Canada Centre, with his 49th and 50th goals scored in Toronto.
After that, the Monster shut things down and gave the home side the chance to parlay goals by Lee Stempniak, Tomas Kaberle and the eventual game winner, on a spinaround shot from his knees, by winger Alexei Ponikarovsky.
The win pulled the Leafs back to within six points of the eighth place Canadiens, with the Leafs holding two games in hand on Montreal. The trouble is that there are five other teams in between the long-time rivals, in a log jam that won’t unravel in the near future.
The Leafs have to come up with another lengthy winning streak just to gain ground on this pack. Anything less and they are just whistling into the wind.
That said, this club needs sniper Phil Kessel to snap out of a one goal in eight games funk.
The team has to get more out of Niklas Hagman, the club’s leading goal scorer (16), who has only 1 goal in his last 11 games.
They simply have to get more productivity out of their power play that is successful only 18.8% of the time (14th in the league) and tighten up the penalty kill which is far and away the worst in the league with a miserable 70.5% success rate.
A string of solid games by the goalies wouldn’t hurt either.
That’s a lot to ask from a team that has not put it all together during their first 43 games.
That’s also why they are still in 14th place in the East this morning.
Tags: Alexei Ponikarovsky, Bryan McCabe, jonas gustavsson, Niklas Hagman, Phil Kessel, tomas kaberle, Toronto Maple Leafs
