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DALLAS — Another gaffe by a Toronto Maple Leafs blueliner resulted in yet another defeat for the struggling NHL team last night.
This time, defenceman Andy Wozneiwski accepted culpability on a second-period mixup with Tomas Kaberle. The two fumbled an attempt to carry the puck out of the Leafs' zone.
The muddled play resulted in a game-winning, unassisted goal by Stars forward Antti Miettinen with 4 minutes 29 seconds remaining in the second period. The Stars went on to get an empty-net goal from Jeff Halpern in the final minute for a 3-1 victory before an announced crowd of 18,409 at the American Airlines Center.
On the game's crucial play, Wozniewski made a dodgy 10-foot pass to Kaberle, who tried to give it back to his teammate just inside the Toronto blueline.
Dallas Stars forward Steve Ott, left, and Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Bryan McCabe duke it out late in the third period of Friday's 3-1 Dallas win. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
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- Jeff Halpern
- Tomas Kaberle
- Chad Kilger
- Pavel Kubina
- Jere Lehtinen
- Antti Miettinen
- Mike Modano
- Brenden Morrow
- Alexei Ponikarovsky
- Mike Ribeiro
- Mike Smith
- Vesa Toskala
- Marty Turco
- Brad Winchester
But Miettinen was backchecking and had an easy time skating between the Leafs' defencemen to steal the puck and swiftly skate the other way. He wound up deking Leafs goaltender Vesa Toskala for a breakaway goal.
"It was my mistake," said Wozniewski, who exhibited plenty of hustle in a first-period play that led to Toronto's only goal, by Alexei Ponikarovsky.
"I shouldn't have passed it to him in the first place," Wozniewski added. "He [Kaberle] wasn't ready. I was trying to give it to him because he is one of the best puckhandlers in the league."
Leafs coach Paul Maurice remarked that he would have liked Kaberle to have grabbed the puck and used his strong skating ability to lug it up the ice. But that wasn't the case and those types of miscues have been what the patient Stars have taken advantage of in their four-game winning streak.
"They certainly don't give you a lot going through the neutral zone," said Toronto's Mats Sundin, whose team was outshot 24-19. "We knew going in that we would have to be patient, and we were, but we didn't get the result."
The Leafs now have been on the losing end of five of their past six games and have dropped all the way to 12th place in the Eastern Conference standings.
Remarkably, Maurice and his players remained upbeat afterward. But there were long faces on the management staff standing outside the dressing room. Leafs general manager John Ferguson Jr., his assistant, Jeff Jackson, and player development adviser Doug Gilmour wore long faces as the rest of the outfit hurried to catch their charter flight to Phoenix, where the Leafs will meet coach Wayne Gretzky and the Coyotes tonight, just 19 hours after the game with the Stars ended.
Like the Stars, the Coyotes have turned around their fortunes because of a change. Phoenix has won three games in a row since it plucked goalie Ilya Bryzgalov on waivers. The Stars are 4-0-2 since a front-office shakeup that saw general manager Doug Armstrong fired and replaced with co-GMs Les Jackson and Brett Hull.
Could there be a similar move on the horizon in Toronto? Well, if the Leafs suffer another loss tonight, the speculation will no doubt rev up.
The Stars were without one of their top players, Jere Lehtinen, who will undergo hernia surgery after being injured this week. Dallas has been stingy in this winning streak, having given up only four goals in four games.
The Leafs, however, struck first on Ponikarovsky's goal, but saw Dallas tie the score early in the second period when Mike Ribeiro eluded Kaberle behind the net to get a shot off. When Miettinen scored, the Leafs knew it would be difficult to come from behind.
"When they get a lead, they're even tougher," Leafs centre Kyle Wellwood said.
Maurice removed Jason Blake, who hasn't scored in 15 games, from the top line and placed Nik Antropov alongside Sundin and Ponikarovsky. But the shuffling did little as the Leafs managed only six shots on goal in the final 20 minutes.
"I just tried to give us a different look," Maurice said. "We weren't getting much going down low."
This was the first meeting between the former divisional rivals since Dec. 10, 2005, when Marty Turco made 20 saves in a 2-1 victory at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
