Leafs Post Game: Four past, fourth last

I’m starting to suspect that this team is never going to win a game on the road ever again. That’s probably a coincidence more than anything, but still, tonight’s loss now makes it so Toronto will have road wins in no more than two of the first nine months of this calendar year. Heck, with only two road games in April and this team likely to sell, sell, sell by Monday, it’ll probably be one of nine.

Needless to say, don’t travel with the team, you’ll leave disappointed. Like the guy who threw his Kessel jersey after Toronto’s 4-0 loss to the Habs.

Do you even care what happened in this game? Does anybody? Okay, let’s assume that this is still interesting and not at all just us going through the motions.

Manny Malholtra opens the scoring in this game exactly five minutes in. A giveaway from Joffrey Lupul gave Dale Weise a break, and he turned that into the drop pass for his teammate. You can’t help but feel good for him, knowing his story as both a veteran and someone coming back from a traumatic injury, so seeing him score his first of the year is nice.

Tomas Plekanec scoring his nineteenth, however, I could do without. In this one, Dion Phaneuf is about to get a penalty and the Leafs just need to touch the puck to start the penalty kill. They don’t ever get the chance, though. Andrei Markov uses excellent vision to find a streaking Plekanec, who is left wide open as he sails through Phaneuf and Korbinian Holzer. A firm snapshot was all that he needed to beat Bernier mid-blocker.

The third goal, scored early in the third period is a bit more controversial. On one hand, Brendan Gallagher should have absolutely been called for goaltender interference, but on the other hand, he some how managed to fend off Joffrey Lupul, Dion Phaneuf, and Roman Polak, who all have about three hundred inches and pounds on him. In any event David Desharnais picked up the loose change on this one, and also added an empty netter in the closing minutes.

Olli Jokinen, for coming to the conclusion that both he and Sergei Gonchar were “too old for this” when the teams started pushing and shoving in the game’s latter half. I don’t have anything positive to say about most of this team, but that was hilarious.