Mar 27th - Canes vs Leafs - Game Review

Well there's not much more to say; I covered all I needed to in the previous posts. I'll do a few bullet points though.

- It was a must win game. Not a must rape. It finished 6-1 (a great goal by Ponikarovsky, for the 6th of the evening).

- The only interesting story of the 3rd period was that Paul Maurice absolutely destroyed Chad Kilger. I don't know for certain what his actual ice time was in the period, but he was out there seemingly the entire 20 minutes trying to get the hat trick.

- Oh, I did forget. Matt Stajan got a huge breakaway (another pass from Kaberle, he's been great since his return; save for the first 5 minutes on Friday night) and got stoned. Haha, fuckbag. Normally I'd be pissed, but since it was 6-1 at that point, I just chuckled heartily.

- One thing that I loved about the game (aside from the score) was Paul Maurice. I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but it was just after either the 4th or 5th goal, the camera panned the Leafs bench. You caught a quick look at Paul Maurice, who had a slight smirk on his face, and pumped his fist twice, ever so slightly. Just as fast as it came; it went. Back to business. The reason I liked it was because I've never seen Maurice show any emotion (in the "happy" side of emotion, I've seen plenty of anger). Maurice knew the importance of this game, and that brief moment of happiness said it all.

- That said, I do have some positives, negatives and wrapup comments I'd like to briefly mention.

Positives
- The Leafs stayed out of the box for the most part. No dumb penalties.
- Scored plenty of goals, none of which came from guys named, Sundin, Tucker, Antropov, Kaberle, Wellwood or McCabe. Albeit one from Ponikarovsky otherwise he would have been mentioned in that list too. Good to have others scoring though.
- Leafs dominated the entire game, as we have done quite often lately, save for one bad period.

Negatives
- Sundin isn't scoring. While we're getting goals from others, it would be nice to get him going as well.
- Raycroft did a few things that made me scratch my head. He was lucky he was able to bail himself out; usually those turn into bad goals for our opponents.
- We're scoring too much. Save some goals for other games (this one is kind of a joke, incase you don't recognize my sarcasm).

Wrapup Comments
- Perreault had a goal and an assist, giving him 500 career points in what was his 800th game.
- Kilger's two goals gave him 200 points in his career.
- Raycroft notched his 35th win of the season, leaving him two shy of Ed Belfour's franchise record of 37 (set back in 02/03).
- Leafs are in Atlanta on Thursday.
- I'm going to leave the talk about the results of the teams we are chasing to someone else, I've posted enough tonight; I presume Dave will get to that either tonight or tomorrow. I will say things worked out fairly nicely.
- Finally, fuck, I was anything but brief again.