Maple Leafs dominate Penguins in every way
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Marc-Andre Fleury gets run over by Toronto's Jason Blake last night.
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The Penguins broke out their throwback uniforms last night, but they chose the wrong ones.
The powder-blue ones associated with the early years of the franchise should have stayed in storage; a performance like this called for the sweaters the Penguins wore during the 1983-84 season, when they lost 58 games, earned 38 -- count 'em, 38 -- points and gave comic ineptitude a bad name.
And, in the process, established a template for the Penguins to follow in their 7-3 loss to Toronto at Mellon Arena.
The Maple Leafs are an utterly ordinary group and needed the victory simply to get back to .500 (13-13-6), but they dominated the Penguins -- who lost for the fifth time in seven games and are marooned in fourth place in the Atlantic Division -- in every phase of the game.
The Penguins were outshot, 40-23. Outchanced by an overwhelming margin. Outworked in ways that can't begin to be quantified.
"Every one of us right now is pretty embarrassed," defenseman Mark Eaton said. "To have a game like that, especially on home ice ... just to get beat all over the ice, it's pretty embarrassing."
Kind of like it was so many nights a quarter-century ago. Stick Lou Angotti, not Michel Therrien, behind the podium at the coach's postgame news conference, and the flashback would have been complete.
The only time the Penguins had an edge in play was when the teams were playing four-on-four. Unfortunately for them, that left 57 minutes and 34 seconds for Toronto to have its way. Which it did.
Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, making his second start since missing a month because of a groin injury, stopped just 28 of 33 shots before giving way to Dany Sabourin for the third period.
And while this defeat hardly could be pinned on one player -- anything this lopsided requires a group effort -- Fleury didn't hesitate to accept his share of the blame.
"I needed to make some saves, to keep the guys in the game, and I didn't," he said.
Fair enough, but the fact that 11 of the first 12 shots in the game were thrown at him should have given Fleury an early indication of how the evening would play out.
"They came out hard," center Sidney Crosby said. "We just had no response at all."
Well, maybe one. After ex-Penguin Dominic Moore gave the Maple Leafs a 1-0 lead at 7:45 of the opening period, Evgeni Malkin tied the score on a spectacular effort at 9:49.
Malkin took a lead pass from Eaton, beat Toronto defenseman Jaime Sifers wide, then cut to the net and put a backhander by goalie Vesa Toskala, a highlights-tape goal on a night when all other video evidence of the game should have been shredded.
Jeremy Williams put Toronto in front to stay by beating Fleury with an unscreened wrist shot from above the right circle 74 seconds after Malkin scored, and Jonas Frogren padded its advantage at 12:56 with a short-side slap shot from the top of the left circle.
The Penguins were justifiably unhappy with their work to that point, and that figured prominently in between-periods conversations. Just not, it seemed, when play resumed.
"There was talk, but talk is cheap," left winger Matt Cooke said. "You've got to go out there and prove it in your actions. You can say whatever you want in the dressing room. Each guy ... has to take responsibility for what happened out there."
Niklas Hagman of Toronto had missed the previous four games after being struck in the head and likely thought he was hallucinating as the middle of the second period approached, when it looked as if Malkin got control of the puck in his own zone and then carried it directly in front of his net.
Trouble is, that's precisely what Malkin did, and he gave it away to Hagman, who stuck a shot under the crossbar at 8:31 of the second to put Toronto up by three. Pavel Kubina made it 5-1 at 16:20, assuring Fleury's departure. .
"[Fleury] was not good, like the rest," Therrien said. "It's not about Marc-Andre. Everyone. Not one guy. Not 10 guys. Everyone."
Two Petr Sykora goals sandwiched scores by Toronto's Alexei Ponikarovsky and Nik Antropov in the third period before time mercifully expired on one of the Penguins' most wretched showings in recent memory.
First Published December 21, 2008 12:00 am
