Bruins Stop Leafs Win Streak At Four
Posted December 8, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was fun while it lasted, and now the Toronto Maple Leafs have to start thinking about building a new winning streak.
Toronto’s winning run ended at four Saturday night, when the Boston Bruins came into town, bringing with them suffocating defence and leaving with a 2-1 victory over the Buds.
Toronto managed to outshoot its opponent, but ran into a netminder playing with a sense of purpose. Alex Auld, making his first start since being acquired from Phoenix on Thursday, allowed only a lone goal by Jason Blake.
Vesa Toskala played well in net but took the loss for the Leafs.
Blake scored on the team’s second shot at 10:28 of the first for his fourth of the season. The Bruins tied things up while playing with the man advantage about two minutes later when Chuck Kobasew snapped a wrist shot past Toskala.
After that both teams tried to grind it out for a lengthy stretch, offering little for the crowd of 19,441 at the Air Canada Centre to get excited about.
Dennis Wideman finally gave Boston a 2-1 lead at 9:25 of the second period with a low slapshot from the Toronto blue-line that glanced off a stick on its path to the net and then Boston say back, seemingly determined to give Auld all the protection they could in his first start.
Toronto had plenty of chances to knot things up again while playing with an extra man, but the club’s 28th-ranked power-play hurt them yet again, going 0-for-6. Meanwhile, captain Mats Sundin‘s club-record points streak from the start of a season ended at 16 games.
Darcy Tucker was back in the lineup after sitting out the previous game, but was hardly a factor for Paul Maurice’s club. The Leafs stay home to play Tampa Bay on Monday and then play seven consecutive road games beginning in Atlanta on Friday.
