NEWS OF MAPLE LEAFS
Last Update:
Saturday May 1, 1999 1:03AM EST
Friday April 30, 1999 Uncomfortable position: Leafs must find way to escape Flyers' trap, get up to speed
The team that killed with speed all season now is dying a slow, suffocating death.
When coach Pat Quinn gazes from the bench these days, he doesn't see a jail-break offence rev up its 3.2 goal-a-game pace from the regular season. He grimaces instead as his Maple Leafs try to run an orange and black gantlet that has limited the NHL's highest-scoring team to six goals heading into Game 5 tonight of the Eastern Conference quarter-final.
"Team speed doesn't count unless you're in position properly," Quinn said yesterday at an otherwise deserted Air Canada Centre. "Our team speed won't come into play unless we have an opportunity to move the puck.
"We're built around (making) a decent transition from our own zone and that's where we're struggling. We spend so much energy in our own end, it's like a victory when we get the puck back (from the Flyers)."
A series the Leafs could have been leading 3-1 was wrenched from their hands in Philadelphia on Wednesday. The Flyers came ashore in the Leafs zone like it was D Day, winning 5-2 to square the best-of-seven series at 2-2. Curtis Joseph was under siege, facing 41 shots for the second consecutive game.
Quinn repeated his line that when the defence tried to clear the puck, his forwards "couldn't be found with a Norden bombsight." But he was careful with the Second World War analogies he made about the Flyers, less his Leafs think they should fight fire with fire.
"Going to war would be playing into their hand," Quinn said of starting any kind of goon show. "We aren't going to war. We've got to be who we are. You can't go to war against a team that plays that way all year."
Regaining home ice is no panacea for the Leafs, who are 6-5-2 overall at the Air Canada Centre and have been unable to muster more than three goals in total against the Flyers in their three visits. Toronto has given up the first goal in every game in the series and never has won a best-of-seven when scoring just six through the first four games.
On the other hand, the confident Flyers felt as if they had solved the Y2K bug when they put four and an empty-netter past Joseph in Game 4.
"Now he has it in head that he's not as good as he was in Game 2 or Game 3," Flyers' Keith Jones said.
At least Joseph has had a few moments of glory in this see-saw series. Outside of defencemen Daniil Markov and Dimitri Yushkevich and some big goals by Steve Thomas, the rest of the Leafs' heads are still somewhere between here and their Barrie playoff hideaway.
FRUITLESS
Quinn was grilled about Mats Sundin having just one goal thus far, though players such as Fredrik Modin, Derek King and Yanic Perreault being rendered invisible by the Flyers, not to mention two fruitless 5-on-3 power plays in the series, have hurt the once-mighty offence, too.
"We have to have the captain, and a lot of other guys (contribute)," Quinn said. "We have to have extra effort and attention to detail. You can't get away with missing a checking assignment like in the regular season."
But Quinn won't give up on a team that lost back-to-back games just five times after Christmas.
"You can't change habits or styles that you've worked on all year long, but we have to execute," he said. "They (Flyers) have taken that time away from us (with relentless forechecking), we just have to deal with it.
"One of the toughest plays in hockey for a defenceman is looking at the glass, going back for a puck knowing a guy is coming to play your body."
Defenceman Alexander Karpovtsev (shoulder strain) remains questionable for tonight in Quinn's opinion. Karpovtsev's absence from Game 4 resulted in 30 minutes of ice time for Dimitri Yushkevich and a fair effort by rusty rookie Tomas Kaberle.
Friday April 30, 1999 Domi-Hextall under review
The Maple Leafs-Flyers series needs its own private investigator.
For the third time during this Eastern Conference quarter-final series, the National Hockey League is investigating an incident.
The latest episode took place during the pre-game warmup on Wednesday in Philadelphia and involved Leafs enforcer Tie Domi and seldom-used Flyers backup goalie Ron Hextall.
Hextall and Domi were involved a shouting match as the pre-game skate began, then, during the warmup, Hextall fired a couple of pucks at Domi.
An unknown Leafs player drove a puck from the corner of the rink and harmlessly hit Hextall, who was standing at centre ice, in the leg.
"The league is aware of it," Leafs president Ken Dryden said. "League officials were aware of it (Wednesday) night. They made a report."
The problem was there was no video of the Domi-Hextall incident.
As of last night, NHL vice-president Colin Campbell had not made a decision on whether there would be disciplinary action.
Hextall obviously was trying to get a rise out of Domi, who was accused of uttering a racial slur at Flyers tough guy Sandy McCarthy during Game 3. The Barrie-raised McCarthy's father is black and his mother is native Canadian.
Domi alleged that McCarthy spit in his face and accused the Flyers forward of concocting a racial-slur story to cover up the saliva scenario.
After investigating the allegations, the NHL decided there was little evidence to either claim.
The Flyers also had asked the league to look at videotape of a Game 2 incident in which Leafs winger Steve Thomas landed an elbow to Eric Desjardins' head. Thomas wasn't disciplined.
Meanwhile, Leafs coach Pat Quinn felt McCarthy's motive in levelling the charge at Domi was to throw the Leafs off their game.
"The Flyers always seem to find new ways to induce distractions and you guys (reporters) gobbled up this racial thing," Quinn said.
There was no doubt Domi was distracted in Game 4 -- a 5-2 Flyers win. A lazy clearing pass led to the Flyers' opening goal by Craig Berube, with McCarthy getting an assist.
Then early in the second period, Domi gave McCarthy a face massage with his glove and was nailed for a two-minute roughing penalty.
Forty-nine seconds later, Flyers defenceman Eric Desjardins scored the eventual game-winning goal with Domi in the box.
""I tried to calm (Domi) down," Quinn said. "What happened to him was unfair. I told him 'Look, let it slide.' But he has spent a lifetime trying to create an image for himself, like we all have, and when you have something like that happen, it affects you."
Thursday April 29, 1999 Series all even but Flyers have the momentum
Mats Sundin and the rest of Maple Leafs' forwards are going to have to contribute more defensively if Toronto is to get past the Philadelphia Flyers and into the next round of the NHL playoffs, says coach Pat Quinn.
Game 5 is Friday (7 p.m. EDT, CBC).
Goaltender Curtis Joseph has played well and the defencemen have been workhorses in the face of fierce forechecking, Quinn said Thursday, but during the second and third periods of a 5-2 Flyers victory Wednesday that tied the first-round series 2-2, "You couldn't find our forwards with a Norden bomb site."
Norden was a manufacturer of radar instruments. Quinn's eyes were his radar in Game 4, and he didn't like what he saw.
"We need more from everybody," he replied when asked specifically about Sundin. "We need to be more attentive to our assignments, particularly without the puck.
"We have to have our captain and a number of other people doing a better job in that area."
When the Flyers dump the puck into Toronto's zone, the Leafs' forwards aren't getting back to help the beleaguered defencemen, Quinn explained.
"(The Flyers) forecheck has produced most of their scoring opportunities," he said. "That's where they've been good all season long, and for years actually, and we haven't been able to nullify it."
Philadelphia is outshooting Toronto 134-71 in the series.
Don't blame Game 4 defencemen Dimitri Yushkevich, Daniil Markov, Sylvain Cote, Chris McAllister, Tomas Kaberle or Bryan Berard. They're targets for onrushing Flyers. Alexander Karpovtsev was out with a strained shoulder, and he's questionable for Game 5.
"One of the hardest things for a defenceman to do is to go back looking in the glass and having to retrieve a puck knowing a guy is coming and he's going to take your body," said Quinn, a former NHL defenceman. "Always has been.
"After a while, taking a pounding, as a defenceman you just starting throwing (the puck) around the boards and that plays further into their hands."
The Flyers' strategy is ruining the Leafs' speedy transition game.
"Team speed doesn't count unless you're back in position to defend properly," Quinn said. "Then you go on offence. It's not when you're hanging out hoping some guy finds you and puts the puck through five people so you can be on the other side of the defence and have easy access to the other end.
"Our team speed won't come into play until we get back into position and have some opportunity to move the puck against their strong forechecking."
Rather than work on all of this in a practice, Quinn gave his players the day off Thursday.
"I wanted to keep them away from you guys," he told reporters at his news conference.
In Philadelphia, he said, the media pestered his players all day about an accusation after Game 3 by the Flyers' Sandy McCarthy that the Leafs' Tie Domi uttered a racial slur on the ice. Domi accused McCarthy of spitting on him. Both denied the other's accusation.
"The Flyers seem to find new ways all the time to produce distractions and you guys gobbled up this racial thing," Quinn said. "I just wanted to keep them away from it.
"They have other things do to, go shopping or something."
The accusations "became a whole sideshow" that distracted his players.
"I don't think they're totally out of whack but I think the day (off) is going to do them well."
Getting involved in shoving matches with the bigger Flyers is self-destructive, Quinn said.
"I don't see that war is the answer. War would play more into their hands than ours. We try to give the hits back, but it's not a major strength that we have. It's like the old paper, scissors, rock game. You have to play with what you've got."
He certainly does not convey the impression he's worried.
"I see ourselves as being capable of beating this or any other team (in the Eastern Conference) if we play the kind of game we've been trying to play all year long," he said. "This team has bounced back before and I fully expect they'll bounce back again."