Toronto 2-3 Atlanta.

85 points. That’s our total at the end of the night. We could have jumped our way into 8^th, perhaps even 7^th, but no. we’re stuck in 9^th. Our performances of late have been a far cry short of what we used to be able to do against the Thrashers. Goals tonight from Pohl (a sweet wrister through Hedburg’s five-hole) and Gill, a wrister into an open net after a sweet sweet play by antropov ensured that we picked up the one point. ultimately though, atlanta came out on top with the overtime winner.

anyways, we’ve got to really buckle down and i can’t see us winning in pittsburgh unless something dramatic happens, as far as i remember, we’ve lost to them every time we’ve faced them this season, and thats going to be a real big psychological blow for us, especially coming on the heels of tonight’s dramatic loss. we then have games against philly, and then four games against 8th place contenders – which means, we basically have to remain undefeated through all those games in order to have a reasonable shot at making the post-season.

 

comments on the game now. devereaux getting shook up over and over again by the thrashers seemed to do nothing to him, only served to make him play harder and skate faster. and that’s the kind of spirit that the team needs. eventually, the thrashers realized that they’re incessant pounding of the guy served no purpose and eased off of him. wellwood was there making the good passes as well as getting his fair share of the checks. antropov demonstrated just how strong he is with and without the puck tonight and sundin is still looking for a goal to tie Sittler’s record, although he managed to extend his point and assist streak. we outshot them 29-27 and did a good job staying out of the box again tonight. although the interference call on tucker was quite ridiculous as even a hockey-newbie would have seen that tucker was pushed into the goaltender and then the thrasher player who shoved him tripped and fell. but i guess that’s just how the game goes. anyways, overall it was a good game and we did play hard, just in the end we caught an unlucky break and went down in a 4-on-3 late in overtime. it was a weak call anyways.

game summary: okay, so the game started at quite a fast pace, and it wasnt long into the game when we picked up our first penalty and allowed the thrashers, via hossa to score on the powerplay and put them up 1-0. this was already quite a blow to morale (for those of us watching) as we’ve been winning games where we score first and this definitely wasnt looking to be one of those games. the game dragged on and it the thrashers definitely were outplaying us, until the late stages of the first period, when pohl got sprung by a nice long pass and zipped into the slot to wire home a wrister (as ive’ said before – thru the five hole). anyways, the start of the 2nd period was much like the 1st with the thrashers getting an early goal with kozlov’s goal. this time however, the leafs responded faster and got the tying goal with hal gill’s wrister. the puck had slid out of the thrasher defensive zone when antropov came out (i cant really say zipped, cuz although wellwood, white and pohl can zip, antropov doesnt – more like bulldozes), picked up the puck, shielded it from a opposing player, skated back into the zone before passing it off and heading straight towards the net. once stationed in front, he managed to pick up the rebound, confuse the hell out of the atlanta defensive line, before sliding the puck back out to gill. the game became an end to end affair as both sides had their chances and finally in overtime, atlanta got the winner.

one thing we can take from this game is that the young guys are definitely stepping up. as it seems like sundin is currently in a slump (in terms of goals), the young guys are definitely doing their part, and scoring the goals for us in order to keep us in the games we play.

for a really good time, be sure to visit here.

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arsenal news: argh. i still can’t get over our incredibly awesome 0.000001% shooting percentage. i’ve got nothing more to say on the matter and will just wait till our next game, where hopefully we can regain our previous fine form and win 22-0 or something like that. we’re playing against the weenies from liverpool. should be easy, start baptista up front and put almunia in net.

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blue jays news: watched the pre-season game against the yankees. we look quite good this year, especially with the addition of frank thomas. though he may be a bit overpaid, hopefully he can prove worthy of the amount of cash we’re spending on him.

~ by anarhawk on March 30, 2007.