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Toronto Maple Leafs Inside Shots
by Sports Xchange
The NHL's last two top picks, Tavares and Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning, are both Toronto-area grads, and Hall and Seguin are Southern Ontario natives as well. It's expected Tavares will fill a lot of seats at the ACC with his family and friends.
Paul Dennis, who retired as the Leafs' development coach this year to become adjunct professor of sports psychology at the University of Toronto and York University, said he's not surprised players such as Stamkos have done so well when they've come back to play in Toronto.
"It's being on stage in the hockey mecca and you're drafted that high, you want to show Toronto what it could've had, even though the Leafs aren't always in control of their draft picks," Dennis said.
Former GM John Ferguson once considered a plan to sign the teenaged Tavares as a free agent and put him with the Leafs' Toronto-based AHL farm team at a time when the talented Tavares seemed tired of junior hockey and was looking for a way around waiting for the 2009 draft. But Tavares later said the idea was nonsensical.
MAPLE LEAFS 2, CAPITALS 1 (SO): The Leafs are a different team when they get some quality goaltending out of Vesa Toskala, and the Capitals are out of sorts when Alex Ovechkin is bottled up.
With those factors working for them, the Leafs ended a five-game losing streak with a rare shootout win on Saturday. NHL Hart Trophy winner Ovechkin had one goal to make it 16 in 17 career games versus Toronto, but the Leafs controlled his time and space and got that goal back on a weird Niklas Hagman deflection past Semyon Varlamov.
In the shootout, where the Leafs had a record of 16-27, Ovechkin shot high on first-star Toskala, while Eric Fehr's stick broke on his attempt. Phil Kessel and Hagman beat Varlamov.
"It was nice to see Vesa get a win for all his hard work," coach Ron Wilson said.
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