Leafs blank Canucks in Vancouver
Associated Press
3/15/2003
VANCOUVER (CP) - Owen Nolan scored a power-play goal late in the second period and goaltender Ed Belfour made 23 saves for his seventh shutout of the season as the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Vancouver Canucks 1-0 Saturday night.
Toronto played without leading scorer Alexander Mogilny, Gary Roberts and newly acquired Doug Gilmour, but still manhandled the Canucks.
Nolan scored at 19:09 of the second on Toronto's third power play of the game. He took Nik Antropov's pass from behind the net and one-timed a bullet over goaltender Alex Auld's shoulder.
Vancouver's best scoring chance came late in the third. With Belfour out of position, Henrik Sedin feathered a pass to captain Markus Naslund but the NHL's leading scorer fanned on the shot.
The Canucks' power play was ineffective all night, going 0-for-7.
Toronto improved to 2-0-1 against Vancouver this season.
A hush fell over the soldout crowd of 18,514 early in the second period when crash-and-bash left-winger Brad May crumbled to the ice after colliding with Leafs captain Mats Sundin.
May, acquired from Phoenix at Tuesday's trade deadline, lay motionless for several minutes before being taken away on a stretcher. He moved an arm while leaving.
Vancouver centre Mats Lindgren left after the first period with an upper body injury. Toronto's Robert Reichel also suffered an upper body injury and didn't return for the third period.
Toronto (39-26-5-2) remained fifth in the Eastern Conference, two points behind Philadelphia, which won 4-1 at Pittsburgh.
The Canucks loss, combined with Detroit's victory over Colorado, dropped Vancouver (40-19-12-1) into third spot in the Western Conference.
The game was barely a minute old before the first chant of ``Leafs suck'' started, but it was Toronto that controlled most of the play. The Leafs used the body to keep the Canucks hemmed in their own zone and Vancouver didn't get a shot on net until more than seven minutes into the game.
Leafs goaltender Ed Belfour made a couple of big saves in the second period, getting a glove on a Brent Sopel shot and stopping Todd Bertuzzi after the big forward took a pass from Trevor Letowski.
The Canucks made a surprise move in starting Auld in place of Peter Skudra. It was Auld's second NHL start but he made a couple early saves, stopping Sudin and Mikael Renberg.
Prior to the game, the Leafs issued a release saying an MRI done in Toronto on Friday showed Gilmour will be out four to six weeks with an injured left knee. Gilmour, acquired from Montreal at Tuesday's trade deadline, hurt the knee Thursday in Calgary in his first game for Toronto.
Also out of the Leaf lineup was Mogilny, who returned home for personal reasons, Darcy Tucker (suspended) and Roberts, who returned to Toronto with Gilmour with a groin injury.
The Canucks were without defenceman Mattias Ohlund (knee surgery), forward Artem Chubarov (abdominal strain) and goaltender Dan Cloutier (sprained knee).<
Notes: Cloutier, out since Feb. 25, is expected to join the Canucks on their upcoming two-game road trip and could play either against Dallas Monday or St. Louis Tuesday....Skudra allowed 16 goals in his last five games before sitting out against Toronto....May said he looked at the tape of his hit Thursday on Keith Tkachuk, which has sidelined the St. Louis star for a month, and said it was clean.
Cheers,
Aquaman