Five goal Leaf eruption stuns Blueshirts

November 1, 2008   ·   Derek Felix   ·   Jump to comments

Something had to give. Trailing by a pair despite coming with a harder work ethic, a more determined Maple Leaf team stuck with it finally solving Stephen Valiquette scoring a ridiculous five unanswered in a 5:21 span to stun the Blueshirts 5-2 at Air Canada Center on Hockey Night In Canada embarrassing them.

Perhaps now Tom Renney’s club will heed their coach’s advice about giving a more consistent effort for 60 minutes because despite the league best record and 21 points coming in, they hadn’t been playing as well as it seemed. Something which the coach warned about off their fourth straight win the other night.

Hard lesson learned. Coming off a very solid first period in which Dan Girardi setup Ryan Callahan’s fourth with 10 seconds left, the team slowly began to lose steam against Ron Wilson’s younger and faster club who doesn’t seem to miss Mats Sundin or Darcy Tucker much these days.

Despite Blair Betts and his fourth line getting rewarded for their continued diligent work when he slammed home a wide Dmitri Kalinin bank shot, they weren’t playing too well. In fact, prior to Betts’ second from Kalinin and the continued hustle of Fredrik Sjostrom, it was Toronto dictating forcing Valiquette to come up with tough saves.

Maybe they weren’t used to having a rare two-goal lead into the third. Whatever the reason, only one line showed which was far from enough as the Leafs killed off a Ranger powerless play before blitzing Valiquette with five in succession befitting of the kind of game they continued to bring.

Vesa Toskala was forced to make one big save when he stuck out his pads on a Chris Drury try from in the slot off a Markus Naslund setup. The Rangers wouldn’t have been on the man-advantage without the fourth line as the improved play of Colton Orr continued with a stuff try forcing Leaf John Mitchell into a penalty with less than 10 minutes left.

A goal here would’ve iced the game and their fifth straight win. Instead, the comedy that is the Ranger powerless play not sponsored by Con Ed continued. Sure. They actually got a couple of shots on Toskala including a rare Michal Rozsival one-timer which was easily gloved with no traffic in front.

But if they did at least fire a couple, that means they absolutely did nothing else getting severely outplayed and outshot by a wide but accurate 17-4 margin.

Once Mitchell redeemed himself taking complete advantage of a careless Scott Gomez turnover walking out before snapping one past Valiquette for his first career NHL tally, the game completely swung in the Toronto’s favor as a dead crowd finally awoke energizing their club who took it to a very lazy Ranger club that tried to hang on instead of pressing for more.

Not surprisingly, it took less than two minutes for former Isle nemesis Jason Blake to just get a piece of a Dominic Moore shot changing it enough to slip by Valiquette for a tie game with 5:58 left forcing Renney to call timeout. Unfortunately, it was too late as after an initial buzz with a shot fired wide, the Leafs came full attack toying with the Blueshirt D with Tomas Kaberle, Nik Antropov and Pavel Kubina playing a game of keep away before the ex-Bolt Kubina ripped a perfect laser upstairs giving the Leafs’ the lead only 52 seconds later.

The Rangers never recovered. Unlike Frank Sinatra’s notorious hit, the worst was yet to come.

First, it was 23 year-old rookie Mitchell continuing a career night by taking a Luke Schenn pass and firing a wrister top shelf for his second of the game 1:12 later. He entered with just two assists in the Leafs’ first 10 games. By the conclusion, he had two goals and an assist.

Completely unraveled, the Rangers then committed their most dubious mistake when D tandem Marc Staal and Paul Mara were caught in a change allowing former fourth liner Moore to get rewarded with an empty net with Valiquette out of position.

Fittingly, Mitchell got the primary and earned the game’s No.1 Star ending an awful stretch of hockey for the Rangers.

Notes: The lone bright spot overall was the continued success of the No.2 ranked Ranger PK which went a perfect 5-for-5 against Toronto. New York only had two power plays running on empty. … With a secondary helper setting up Callahan, Nigel Dawes snapped a four-game scoreless drought. The LW still has only one goal. Callahan’s fourth ended a four-game drought. … Before the Leaf explosion, Ranger netminders held them without a goal during the first 117:35 of the season series dating back to the club’s 1-0 shootout triumph on Oct.17. … Toskala needed only four stops in the third finishing with 18 saves overall dealing local native Valiquette (30 of 35) his first defeat in four outings versus Toronto. … Blueshirts (10-3-1, 21 Pts) look to bounceback at MSG Tuesday versus last overall Islanders (2-7-1, 5 Pts) who blew a three-goal lead in a 5-4 home loss to Montreal.

Three Stars

3rd Star-Sjostrom-Betts-Orr, NYR (goal, assist, 3 SOG, plus-three)

2nd Star-Jason Blake, Tor (tying goal, assist, 5 SOG, plus-three in 13:41)

1st Star-John Mitchell, Tor (first 2 career NHL goals, assist, 5 SOG, plus-four in 15:21)