Leafs put end to five-game losing streak
Kadri scores twice, Smith pots OT winner
TORONTO It had been 12 days since the Toronto Maple Leafs won their last game, a span in which the team had managed to lose five straight games and drop closer to a pack of teams chasing them and their suddenly tenuous hold on a playoff spot.
“Good thing it’s not a lockout season this year,” centre Nazem Kadri said. “So we’ve got plenty of time to make it up.”
The Leafs had a five-game losing streak last year, too, near the stretch drive of a lockout-shortened season. They managed to stay above water and make the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade, but they have also had longer streaks — they opened 0-7-1 in 2009-10 — which have left them sunk and out of post-season contention.
On Thursday, Kadri supported his optimism, scoring twice to help rescue the Leafs from their losing ways. Trevor Smith scored with 42 seconds left in overtime to lift Toronto to a 3-2 win over the Dallas Stars, a win also made possible by a 48-save performance from Jonathan Bernier.
Toronto was missing two of its top-six forwards, with Tyler Bozak (oblique) and Joffrey Lupul (groin) on the sidelines. Dallas was also limping, though, with veteran defenceman Stephane Robidas out with a broken leg, and with Tyler Seguin returning after missing two games with a concussion.
It got worse for the Stars early in the second period, when defenceman Trevor Daley was racing for a puck against Leafs winger James van Riemsdyk. Both went down to the ice, but only one got back up. Daley’s skate blade seemed to catch and he went down awkwardly. The play continued and ended with Kessel slipping a pass to van Riemsdyk, who relayed it to Kadri for a 1-0 lead, with Daley crumpled near the end boards. He was helped off the ice and did not return.
The Leafs continued to struggle with the issues that have contributed to their losing streak. Toronto struggled to control possession — it took the Leafs more than 11 minutes to collect their first shot of the game — and allowed the Stars to fire away on Bernier.
He held Dallas off the scoreboard through the first two periods, stopping all 27 shots he faced. It was shot No. 28, two minutes into the third, which finally beat him. The Stars collected a loose puck in the neutral zone and the shortened rush ended when Erik Cole buried a nice crossice pass from Shawn Horcoff.
Kadri gave the Leafs their 2-1 lead with a power-play goal seven minutes into the third.