GAME SUMMARIES
Updated: Saturday April 1, 2000 10:44PM EST
Thursday March 30, 2000 Toronto at Chicago
Jocelyn Thibault got all the help he needed. Thibault made 27 saves for his third shutout of the season and second in four starts as the Chicago Blackhawks beat Toronto 4-0 on Thursday night to end a three-game winless streak. "You can't do it all by yourself," Thibault said. "The guys have to play well in front of you. That's what happened tonight."
Alex Zhamnov and Michael Nylander each had a goal and assist for Chicago, which ended Toronto's two-game winning streak. Anders Eriksson and Bob Probert also scored.
"Our defensive zone coverage and team defense was outstanding," Blackhawks associate coach Lorne Molleken said. "We shut Toronto down and later Thibault was great."
The Maple Leafs are 3-5-0 since March 15, with four of the five losses to teams out of playoff contention.
"It wasn't very good," Toronto coach Pat Quinn said. "They weren't great, but we happened to be worse. We never went to loose pucks and people went right around us."
Eriksson opened the scoring with 1:24 left in the first period, beating screened goalie Glenn Healy with a 50-foot shot.
After Zhamnov was high-sticked by Dmitri Yushkevich, the Chicago forward scored during the ensuing power play to make it 2-0 lead at 5:51 of the second period.
One of Thibault's best stops came with 2:50 left in the second, when he made a point-blank pad save on Mats Sundin.
Nylander made it 3-0 at 1:36 of the third period on a 25-foot wrist shot that went under Healy's blocker. Probert scored at 5:53, deflecting in Steve Sullivan's shot from a sharp angle.
Wednesday March 29, 2000 Toronto at St. Louis
Curtis Joseph still enjoys making life miserable for his former team. The Toronto goalie did it again Wednesday night, making 34 saves to help the Maple Leafs defeat the St. Louis Blues 3-2.
"The players are all different, but it's the same feel, the same music, the same atmosphere," Joseph said of coming back to the Kiel Center. "It's obviously a big win for us."
The loss was the first for the Blues this season against a team from Canada (13-1-3). No U.S. based team has gone undefeated in a season against Canadian teams.
Steve Thomas, who along with Jonas Hoglund had a goal and an assist, said the formula for victory was pretty simple.
"Cujo stood on his head and we scored some timely goals," Thomas said.
Mats Sundin set up all the goals as the Maple Leafs snapped the Blues' six-game unbeaten streak. Toronto scored three times on just 16 shots against Roman Turek.
Craig Conroy and Jochen Hecht scored for the Blues, who lead Detroit by just one point for the NHL's best record. The teams meet Saturday at St. Louis.
Blues defenseman Al MacInnis does not expect his team to panic.
"It's not like we're winning 10 and then losing a bunch," he said. "We've been pretty consistent all year."
The Blues welcomed Pierre Turgeon back to the lineup, but were without All-Star forward Pavol Demitra.
"One guy will not replace Pavol," said MacInnis, who has also missed a significant amount of time with a variety of injuries. "But he (Demitra) has played a lot of hockey so maybe a few days off will do him good."
Cory Cross scored the other goal for the Maple Leafs.
Thomas broke a 2-2 tie with his 22nd goal at 5:57 of the third period. Sundin started the play by stealing the puck from defenseman Chris Pronger at the point. He dumped it into the corner to Hoglund, who centered in front and Thomas tipped it home.
Thomas credited Hoglund for the goal.
"He got a step on the defense and threw it in front," Thomas said. "(I had) a wide open net. It was a pretty easy goal to score."
St. Louis had allowed only four goals in five games.
Cross got Toronto on the board, just 1:25 in, with his fourth goal. Sundin shot the puck into the St. Louis zone then chased down his own rebound along the right boards. When the Blues converged on Sundin, he centered to Cross, who beat Turek for a 1-0 lead.
After Conroy tied it at 5:56 with his 12th goal, Hoglund gave the Maple Leafs the lead again 2:28 into the second with a power-play goal that banked in off Pronger. St. Louis had killed 66 of 68 power plays before Hoglund's 28th goal.
Hecht tied it 2-2 with a power-play goal of his own at 4:58 of the period, lifting his own rebound over Joseph for his 10th goal.
Saturday March 25, 2000 New Jersey at Toronto
Sergei Berezin scored twice and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept alive their hopes of finishing first in the Eastern Conference with a 5-3 victory Saturday night over the New Jersey Devils.
Nikolai Antropov, Garry Valk and Darcy Tucker also scored for the Leafs, who ended a three-game losing streak.
With two weeks left in the season, the Leafs are within five points of the conference-leading Devils with a game in hand.
The line of Berezin, Antropov and center Yanic Perreault combined for six points.
Curtis Joseph stopped 29 shots, including 12 in the third period when the Maple Leafs sat back protecting the two-goal lead.
The Devils, 1-1 under new coach Larry Robinson, looked nothing like the team that hammered the New York Islanders 8-2 on Friday night in Robinson's first game behind the bench after replacing the fired Robbie Ftorek.
John Madden had two goals and Petr Sykora also scored for the Devils, who outplayed the Leafs for the first half of the game.
Berezin responded just over a minute after Madden's second goal during a power play, making it 3-3 with a slap shot from the right-faceoff circle into the top left corner past Martin Brodeur's outstretched glove.
Tucker gave Toronto the lead on a controversial play with less than five minutes to go in the second, scoring into a half-empty net after it appeared Toronto captain Mats Sundin interfered with Brodeur. The Devils, who once again gave the puck away in their own zone, argued the call to no avail.
Antropov completed a nice three-way passing play late in the second, tapping in a pass from Perreault at the edge of the crease behind a helpless Brodeur for a 5-3 lead. Berezin started the play with a fake shot and a perfect pass to Perreault across the Devils zone to the left of Brodeur.
The Devils took a 2-0 lead in the first seven minutes on goals 31 seconds apart from Madden and Sykora.
But Berezin cut it to 2-1 with a rush from center ice. Berezin used a between-the-legs deke to get past defenseman Ken Daneyko and then poked a shot past Brodeur.
Valk, wearing a visor for the first time in the wake of teammate Bryan Berard's eye injury, scored short-handed on a breakaway to tie it.
Thursday March 23, 2000 Toronto at Ottawa
Thanks to the scoring of Radek Bonk, the Ottawa Senators are still alive in the Northeast Division title chase.
Bonk scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period to lead Ottawa to a 3-2 victory over Toronto on Thursday night.
"It was a huge game for us," said Ottawa's Andreas Dackell, who gave the Senators a 2-0 lead midway through the first period. "We still have a chance. We played really solidly, especially on defense. They really stood them up well."
Rob Zamuner and Andreas Dackell also scored for the Senators, who trail the Maple Leafs by three points in the division chase. Ottawa is attempting to catch Toronto and repeat as division champion with nine games remaining.
"We knew if we are going to catch them we had to win tonight," Bonk said. "There were good chances on both sides and Tom Barrasso made the big saves for us."
Yanic Perreault and Nik Antropov each had a goal and an assist for Toronto, which lost the season series with Ottawa 3-1-1.
"You can have excuses all the time," Toronto coach Pat Quinn said. "But three losses in a row is a lot."
With the game tied 2-2 and Ottawa on the power play, Sami Salo's shot from just inside the blue line hit Danny Markov's skate and Bonk fired the rebound over goalie Curtis Joseph with 9:48 remaining for his 20th goal of the season.
The game was Toronto's first at the Corel Centre since March 11, when Marian Hossa swung his stick at a loose puck during Toronto's 4-2 win and inadvertently struck Toronto defenseman Bryan Berard, who may lose the vision in his right eye.
Zamuner opened the scoring on a 2-on-1 rush 5:02 into the game, firing Daniel Alfredsson's rebound past Joseph.
Dackell intercepted a pass by Markov and beat Joseph with a back-hander from close range at 13:08 to give Ottawa a 2-0 lead.
Antropov buried Sergei Berezin's rebound past Ottawa's Tom Barrasso with 55 seconds left in the first to make it 2-1.
Joseph, among the league leaders in all major goaltending categories, made strong saves on Hossa and Vinnie Prospal as Ottawa built a 13-3 shot advantage during the first. Ottawa outshot Toronto 36-27 overall.
Perreault tapped Antropov's rebound into the open side to tie it with the only goal of the second period at 12:19.
Barrasso made big saves on Antropov, Mats Sundin and Berezin in the last four minutes to preserve the win.
"We're in a bit of a funk, that's for sure," Joseph said. "We had a couple of good chances to tie the game but he (Barrasso) was strong."
Wednesday March 22, 2000 NY Islanders at Toronto
The New York Islanders rebounded from their worst loss of the season at the expense of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Claude Lapointe and Mariusz Czerkawski each scored two goals and Kevin Weekes made 27 saves as the Islanders beat the Maple Leafs 5-2 on Wednesday night.
New York, eliminated from playoff contention last week, was coming off an 8-2 home loss to Pittsburgh on Tuesday night.
"We played hard and got rewarded," coach Butch Goring said. "I expected that we would bounce back after that big loss. I'm proud of the way we performed. And Kevin made some big saves for us."
Brad Isbister added a goal and two assists for New York.
Weekes made 20 saves in the third period when the Islanders were outshot 21-4.
"Kevin was unbelievable out there," said Czerkawski, who leads the Islanders with 28 goals. "He gave us a chance to win. It's a nice way to come back from an 8-2 loss."
Alexander Karpovtsev and Sergei Berezin scored for Toronto, which remained tied with Washington for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. The Maple Leafs have lost three of four games since losing defenseman Bryan Berard with a serious eye injury March 11. Before that, Toronto had won nine of 10.
"We better wake up fast or we don't stand a chance," Toronto coach Pat Quinn said. "Our team, for some reason, came up with a clunker. It was probably an awful game to watch. At least it was from behind the bench. Neither team created anything."
Weekes stopped Berezin on two close-range chances in the first period, and snared Steve Thomas' 40-foot blast to protect a 1-0 lead in the second period.
"The key was we were able to connect on our offensive opportunities," Weekes said. "That made things easier for us. But give credit to Toronto. They're a resilient team. They never stopped in the third period."
Lapointe opened the scoring at 6:23 of the first period on a power play when he one-timed a centering pass from Dmitri Nabokov past goalie Glenn Healy. Evgeny Korolev, playing in his 11th career game, assisted on the goal for his first NHL point.
Czerkawski and Karpovtsev exchanged goals early in the second period, and Lapointe got his second of the game and 15th of the season when he banged in a rebound on a power play at 13:09.
Isbister and Czerkawski added goals in the third period. Isbister has a career-high 20 goals.
Islanders center Dave Scatchard left the game early in the first period because of a concussion after colliding with a Toronto defenseman.