NHL ROUNDUP : Gilmour Leads Surging Maple Leafs

Doug Gilmour scored his 23rd and 24th goals and assisted on Dave Andreychuk’s 36th, and Nikolai Borschevsky chipped in with his 24th, as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-1, Friday night at Toronto.

The Maple Leafs’ fifth consecutive victory improved their record to 29-22-8 for 66 points, tying them with the Minnesota North Stars for third place in the Norris Division.

“This is just great,” Gilmour said of the streak. “We’ve just got to keep on climbing. We’ve got a share of third now and, if we can keep on winning like this, we’ll climb closer to second.”

Gilmour, fifth in the NHL in scoring with 93 points, had at least three points in a game for the 14th time this season.

Toronto appears headed to a plus-.500 season for the first time since 1979.

The Lightning outshot Toronto, 28-24, but goaltender Daren Puppa was superb in his second start since being acquired from Buffalo along with Andreychuk for goalie Grant Fuhr two weeks ago.

New Jersey 3, Buffalo 3--The Devils got a power-play goal from Claude Lemieux early in the third period to rally for a tie at East Rutherford, N.J.

The tie gave the Devils 61 points, three behind second-place Washington and two ahead of the fourth-place New York Rangers. The Islanders are one point out of the playoff picture with 58 points.

The Sabres’ Grant Fuhr, acquired from Toronto on Feb. 2, had 31 saves, including at least six in the final 11 minutes of regulation.

Detroit 3, Calgary 3--Red Wing captain Steve Yzerman, triple-teamed by the Flames, had his six-game, 20-point streak stopped at Detroit.

“We had to do something,” Calgary Coach Dave King said of his unusual strategy of assigning three defensemen to Yzerman. “We knew he was on an amazing streak.”

King used defensman Roger Johansson as a left wing, but Johansson was actually playing defense.