Concussion sidelines Pronger indefinitely
Leaf Tim Connolly, left, cries out in pain after colliding with the Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin (8) while rushing to the aid of goalie James Reimer in the second period. Connolly got treatment, then returned to the game.
Nick Wass/AP
WASHINGTON—The Maple Leafs aren’t, in the grand scheme, a gang of undisciplined goons. They came into Friday’s game against the Capitals as the 13th most penalized team in the NHL.
So why did they depart the U.S. capital having cemented their status as the league leader in power-play goals against? It’s because Toronto’s penalty kill continued to fail, allowing all four goals in Washington’s 4-2 win over the Leafs.
On Friday night the Leafs didn’t simply struggle to weather two minutes with a manpower disadvantage. They had trouble killing off one minute or less. Washington’s first power-play goal, by defenceman Dennis Wideman, came 33 seconds into the 5-on-4 advantage. Washington’s second goal, a Wideman shot from the point that made it 2-0 less than two minutes into the second period, came all of 11 seconds into Toronto’s bench minor for too many men on the ice. And when Joey Crabb’s second-period boarding penalty gave the Capitals 39 seconds of 5-on-3 advantage, the Capitals only needed 38 seconds of it to cash in. Niklas Backstrom found the net from the doorstep on a shot that was initially stopped by a sprawling James Reimer, the knob of whose stick actually batted the puck across the line.
The Leafs certainly took the brunt of some bad bounces. And there’s no doubt they outplayed the Capitals 5-on-5. But it certainly can’t comfort the citizens of Leafland that, while the league’s best penalty kill, the New Jersey Devils, has allowed six goals all season, its Leafs counterpart has allowed six in the past two games. For all the Leafs’ improvements this season, and for all the optimism that surrounds the club, their work a man or more short continues to be a glaring weak spot.
It’s often said that a goaltender is a team’s most important penalty killer, but it was difficult to find fault with Reimer on any of Washington’s markers.
“We kind of shot ourselves in the foot tonight,” said Reimer, who has yet to register a win in three games since his return from a head-injury-induced six-week absence.
“If you look at our game overall, I thought we played great. I thought we dominated them 5-on-5. . . . And we just took a few too many penalties, and they’ve got a great power play. And even having said that, they got a couple of lucky bounces on their power play, too. The first one goes off a skate. The last one goes off a skate. So it wasn’t even that our penalty kill was that bad, either.”
Certainly it wasn’t that good. Friday’s was the second game in a row and the third game this season in which the Leafs allowed an opposing team to begin a game 2-for-2 on the power play. It was the first time they’d allowed a team to go 3-for-3, not to mention score four all told. In 29 games, the Leafs have allowed 29 power-play goals.
“We played probably not aggressive enough (short-handed),” said Carl Gunnarsson, a mainstay of the Toronto penalty kill. “Overall, 5-on-5, we were the better team. But then we gave them chances on their power play . . . ”
It was, at times, a hard-hitting affair. Dion Phaneuf and Alex Ovechkin exchanged some memorable levellings. And certainly Ovechkin, though he didn’t score, was hard enough to handle. Late in the second period, Ovechkin found space down the left wing and beat Reimer with a shot — only to see the puck hit the crossbar. Ovechkin’s momentum sent him falling into the backchecking Tim Connolly, who needed the attention of the training staff. Connolly, after a brief trip to the Toronto dressing room, returned to the lineup.
The Leafs had their chances. Joffrey Lupul fanned on a point-blank scoring chance late in the first period, his whiff producing a half-speed shot that hit a post and somehow eluded the blade of the bystanding Phil Kessel. Kessel was left shaking his head during the ensuing stoppage of play, as in, “How did we not find a way to put that in?”
Kessel eventually found some satisfaction, scoring his 18th goal of the season late in the second period to make it 2-1, knocking in a crease-lying puck that had skipped over Tomas Vokoun’s pad thanks to the side-of-the-net hustle of Tyler Bozak.
Cody Franson scored to make it 3-2 with a little less than seven minutes remaining in regulation, Nikolai Kulemin setting up the pressure-inducing sequence with a gorgeous drop pass before Kulemin also provided helpful net-front traffic.
The Leafs, though they haven’t spent this season taking an undue number of ill-advised penalties, could have been more prudent on Friday. Colby Armstrong, playing his first game since Oct. 19, took a second-period high-sticking penalty, the first minor that led to the 5-on-3, that was flat-out unnecessary. Ditto Crabb’s high-sticking penalty, this with 2:14 remaining in regulation and the Leafs applying some impressive pressure in the push for an equalizer. Sure enough, 55 seconds later, the Capitals had removed most of the doubt in the outcome on a Wideman slapper from the top of the left circle, his third of the night, that Wideman later suggested went in off the leg of teammate Brooks Laich. The hats rained from the Verizon Centre rafters all the same.
“You go out there with a negative feeling when you’ve just taken a penalty that was unnecessary,” said Ron Wilson, the Leafs coach. “So we’ve just got to put this aside. We played so well 5-on-5, so we’ll forget about this one and prepare for the next game.”