 |
| |
|
 |
 |
|
|
TORONTO (Ticker) -- The Toronto Maple Leafs emerged from the NHL's version of "Survivor." Alexander Mogilny scored twice and Curtis Joseph stopped 31 shots to help the Maple Leafs hold on for a 4-2 victory over the New York Islanders in the decisive seventh game of their bruising Eastern Conference quarterfinal series. Both teams lost key players to injuries in a bitterly contested series that featured charges of cheap shots. But Toronto survived the loss of team captain and leading scorer Mats Sundin after Game Three and the absence of checking specialist Shayne Corson, who was suspended by the NHL after Game Six for kicking. "It was a war, physical battles all over the ice," Maple Leafs center Travis Green said. "Both teams made no bones about it. They were going to come out and come hard at each other. Thank God we had home-ice (advantage)." Mogilny, who has been battling the flu, got the go-ahead tally early in the second period and added an empty-netter with 40 seconds left in the third after the Islanders climbed within a goal and peppered Joseph. Gary Roberts added a goal and an assist for the Maple Leafs, who will face the Ottawa Senators in the playoffs for the third straight season in a conference semifinal series that begins Thursday at the Air Canada Centre. "They're a very confident team right now, I suspect," Toronto center Darcy Tucker said. "But I think we'd rather just soak this in." Defenseman Roman Hamrlik set up both goals for the Islanders, who finished last in the league last season but added Michael Peca, Alexei Yashin and goaltender Chris Osgood to the roster and engineered a 44-point improvement. "It was disappointing when we first came in the room (after the game). It was dead quiet in here," said Osgood, who shook off a first-period injury and finished with 26 saves. "No one was thinking, 'Gee, we made all these strides, we did so many good things this year.' We were just thinking about the loss, about how close we were going to the next round, how close we were to tying the game." New York climbed within 3-2 with 15:37 remaining on Kip Miller's fourth goal of the series. Miller, who spent the first half of the season in the American Hockey League, snapped a wrist shot from the right faceoff dot over the left shoulder of a crouching Joseph. "We had nothing to lose, we were down, 3-1," Isles coach Peter Laviolette said. "Then Kip got one and we thought if we kept pressing them, we could get another." They almost did. On a power play, Yashin got a step behind the defense after a bad line change by the Maple Leafs but put a wrist shot from the right circle off Joseph's right shoulder with 7:26 to go. Three minutes later, rookie Trent Hunter got past defenseman Tomas Kaberle along the right boards, dragged the puck around sliding defenseman Bryan McCabe and got off a shot from the low slot that Joseph smothered. With less than two minutes to play, Joseph made a stick save on Hamrlik's blast through traffic from the left point. "They were getting shots through that you would have to look for," Joseph said. "I'm just glad we got one more goal than they did." "There were a lot of shots getting thrown at the net," New York right wing Steve Webb said. "I wish we had brought that in the first period. Cujo stood on his head." With Corson, his shadow, watching from the press box, Yashin gave New York a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal just 3:41 into the first period. It was his third of the series after going 13 playoff games without one. "I thought Alexei was our best player in the playoffs," Laviolette said. "He had a lot of points, triple that in opportunities. He played well at both ends of the ice." The Islanders lost the lead -- and almost Osgood -- just under 10 minutes later. Tie Domi's pass tipped off the stick of New York's Mariusz Czerkawski before finding Roberts, who cut in front of the net, shifted from his backhand and put a shot around Osgood's right leg for his second goal of the series. Roberts also landed an accidental knee that felled Osgood for several minutes. Osgood was able to continue but was beaten by Mogilny 2:37 into the second period. Toronto pulled Joseph for an extra attacker during a delayed penalty and carried into the Islanders' zone. Tucker's pass missed Mogilny and carried all the way to former Islander Robert Reichel in the left circle. Reichel got it into the slot for Mogilny, who wristed a shot inside the right goalpost. "I had a lot of chances (in the series). Thank God it happened tonight," Mogilny said. "It couldn't have been a better time for us. But if I score a few goals in between, who knows, maybe Game Seven would have never happened." Green, another ex-Islander, made it 3-1 with 6:12 to go in the second, using New York's Claude Lapointe as a screen before beating Osgood with a wrister from the top of the right circle. "You have to give (the Islanders) a lot of credit," Tucker said. "They played hard. This was an exhausting, long, tiring series that went the limit. It took everything we had to beat them." |
|
||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
