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Six-shooter Maple Leafs find that less is not always more
Posted: Tuesday May 09, 2000 12:59 AM
By Chris Stevenson, SLAM! Sports EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The little tuft of whiskers under Martin Brodeur's bottom lip twitched as he screwed up his face in thought.
It was a clean face except for those blond whiskers, not flushed, surely not the face of a goaltender who had just registered a shutout while ousting another team from the playoffs Then again, the New Jersey Devils netminder had faced just six shots off the sticks of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Devils' 3-0 win, which ended the Leafs' season. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, whose employees make a living knowing these things, it was the fewest number of shots taken by a team in a regular season or playoff game since the start of the expansion era in 1967. In a bit of a coincidence, that just happens to be the last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup. It might be that long again if they can't come up with an effort that produces more than a shot every 10 minutes in a game they had to win to stay alive. "Geez, six shots, you'd think I could remember them all," said Brodeur. "There were two saves I made. There was one early in the first, a glove save. Then I got a shoulder or an elbow on a shot by [Darcy] Tucker...there was a [Steve] Thomas shot from the corner... [Sergei] Berezin had two from outside the blue line ... that's five," he said proudly. "I'm just missing one." That one came in the first period off the stick of Igor Korolev, Martin. Three, two, one... No, that that wasn't the clock counting down to the start of the Leafs' golf season, but it was close. Those numbers represent the shots the Leafs were credited with in each period Monday night. You'd think that would make for an easy night for Brodeur, who is the most dominant goaltender left in the NHL's post-season tournament, but funny things can happen to a guy when his mind is given that much time to work. "When there's not much work, [your mind] works non-stop. Every time a guy was winding up, I was scared," said Brodeur. "You're scared it's going to be a butterfly or somebody is going to touch it. The team is playing so well in front of you and if you have just a little lapse it puts you as the goat and you don't want to be one. "It was tough. It was probably a game I sweated the most and not because it was 90 degrees outside." Six shots. One of them not even memorable to the guy who had to stop them. The urge to shoot, unless your name is Berezin, is not one that overcomes the Leafs often. They are the Barney Fifes of the NHL, the guys with one bullet and no opporunity good enough to use it. The stats sheet which charts the shots taken by the Leafs was as blank as the looks on their faces in their dressing room afterwards. "It is part of our problem," said Leafs coach and GM Pat Quinn. "It wasn't just in this series. It is an on-going problem for our hockey club. They want to wait until they see the back of the net. "When you play a good defensive hockey club, they take care of the play. They finish their checks about as well as anyone in hockey. That was the story. We kept waiting for our guys not to get taken out so they would have that little extra room so that they could be stickhandling and somehow get in on Brodeur. We underestimated the prowess of this hockey club." Leafs winger Gary Valk was indignant. "They've always done that in this building," he said. "They don't give you credit for your shots. It makes you look like you're not in the game. They've done that for years. "We had our own guys counting and they said we had 14 or 15." That sounds about right. Six shots U.S. works out to about 14 Canadian.
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