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ANAHEIM — Not even the return of goaltender Vesa Toskala could coax any life out of the Toronto Maple Leafs Wednesday night.
Toskala looked a little rusty at first in his first game since suffering a groin injury just before Christmas. But the big problem was that his teammates remained in the semi-comatose state they went into when Toskala was hurt. The Leafs wilted in front of the defending Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks, falling 5-0 thanks to their defensive mistakes, feeble offence and an appalling power play, which went 0-for-6.
It was the Leafs' third consecutive loss and, thanks to a win by the Washington Capitals, they dropped to 14th in the Eastern Conference standing with a 16-19-8 record. They are now five points out of the eighth and last playoff spot and at their lowest point since consecutive road losses in Dallas and Phoenix in late November sparked an uproar among the fans and media.
The Leafs' ineptness was summed up well after the game was lost, when they had a five-on-three power play for more than a minute late in the third period. They could not even get the puck into the Ducks' zone.
Anaheim's Todd Bertuzzi, left, celebrates scoring a first-period goal with teammate Mathieu Schneider. (Danny Moloshok/Reuters)
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- Anaheim Ducks
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Washington Capitals
- Nik Antropov
- Wade Belak
- Todd Bertuzzi
- Boyd Devereaux
- Ryan Getzlaf
- Jean-Sebastien Giguere
- Hal Gill
- Tomas Kaberle
- Chris Kunitz
- George Parros
- Corey Perry
- Alexei Ponikarovsky
- Mathieu Schneider
- Alexander Steen
- Vesa Toskala
- Doug Weight
- Kyle Wellwood
Forward Alexander Steen, who was put on the point in this game to make the unit more mobile, turned the puck over at the Ducks blue line and then went offside on another attempt seconds later. The second unit also went offside and was equally feeble.
All evening, the unit functioned much like the Leaf offence in five-on-five situations, rarely going to the net and coughing up the puck at the blue line.
"When you watch that five-on-three, that gives you the answer right there," Leafs head coach Paul Maurice said of his team's humiliation. "We've got to find a way to get these guys going. It affects the decisions they make. They are doing some strange things.
"We didn't move the puck on the power play. We had enough opportunities to score goals on it. We just didn't do it."
Any lingering doubt about the outcome was removed at 4:16 of the third period when Leaf winger Nik Antropov was stripped of the puck near the Leaf blueline by Ducks centre Ryan Getzlaf. Antropov had a chance to clear the puck but instead lost it to Getzlaf, who started the play that led to Brandon Bochenski's first goal of the season. That put the Ducks up by three, a margin that could never be overcome by the Leafs' popgun offence against a team like the Ducks.
Antropov wasn't finished with his mistakes, though. He took a high-sticking penalty a couple minutes later and Doug Weight scored on the Ducks' power play. Chris Kunitz scored the last Anaheim goal, also on the power play.
"We've been in this situation before," said forward Matt Stajan, referring to the losses in November, although his words sounded hollow. "After the Phoenix game we responded nicely."
Toskala was given a rude welcome back right off the bat when his teammates showed him why they were so awful in his absence.
First up was centre Kyle Wellwood, who not only picked a bad time to change on the fly, he took his sweet time skating to the Leaf bench. Combined with a fall by Leaf defenceman Tomas Kaberle, that opened the middle of the ice for Ducks defenceman Mathieu Schneider. He fired the puck up the ice to Todd Bertuzzi for a breakaway. He roared in on Toskala, made a deke, left the goaltender lying helplessly on the ice and scored his seventh goal of the season two minutes, 11 seconds into the game.
Maurice did not seem too impressed with Wellwood's move. The tiny centre was glimpsed only infrequently for the rest of the period, as most of his shifts between Alexei Ponikarovsky and Nik Antropov were taken by Boyd Devereaux, although he did get some power-play time.
For most of the remainder of the period, the Leafs managed to control the play, although there were a couple of caveats.
First, any time the Ducks first line of Getzlaf and wingers Corey Perry and Bertuzzi were on the ice, they had the run of the place. Second, the Leaf offence is still resisting with all its might the notion of going to the net so Ducks goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere did not have many dangerous scoring chances to worry all night in earning his 27th career shutout.
The next fellow to make a pratfall that cost the Leafs a goal was the generally reliable Hal Gill. As the seconds wound down in the first period, the big defenceman tried to keep the puck in at the Ducks blueline. He knocked the puck ahead with his glove but fell to the ice and Getzlaf stole it.
That set off a rush with Bertuzzi and Perry. Bertuzzi carried the puck, then fed Perry, who beat Toskala with a wrist shot with six seconds left in the period to give the Ducks a 2-0 lead that held up into the third period.
"The power play was the difference tonight," said Leaf captain Mats Sundin. "We had a tough time retrieving the puck when we dumped it in.
"We're making it complicated out there. We're not making the simple plays."
Some bad blood made its way into the game in the second period thanks to a couple of hits by the Maple Leafs. The first was at 3:04 by enforcer Wade Belak, who had a knee-on-knee hit with fellow tough-guy George Parros. This prompted the Ducks fighter to engage Belak in a fight. Parros lost the fight and then had to leave the game because of a knee injury.
The best legal check of the period was made by the 38-year-old Schneider. He caught Leaf winger Jason Blake trying to be a little too fancy on a solo power-play rush and flattened him at the Ducks blueline. While it was a legal hit, no Leaf bothered to rush to Blake's defence, something that also happened last Saturday when Blake was the victim of an illegal hit from Steve Downie.
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