Maple Leafs Drill Kings With Power Tools

So that’s what a power play is supposed to look like.

The Kings got a lesson in Man-Advantage 101, with Profs. Sergei Berezin and Dimitri Yushkevich instructing and Mats Sundin as the teachers’ assistant, and the Maple Leafs scored a 3-1 victory Wednesday night.

All three Toronto goals--two by Berezin--came on power plays and, if there was a bit of fortune involved in them, it was because the Maple Leafs were in the right place at the right time on each.

The right place was in front of the net, bearing down on King goalie Jamie Storr, who was playing near his hometown, in his final game in historic, 68-year-old Maple Leaf Gardens, which is being replaced by one of those new airline-named arenas in February.

The right time was when Sundin was centering the puck or when Yushkevich was shooting it from the blue line.

“[Toronto goalie Curtis] Joseph played a great game, but if he sees the puck he’s going to stop it,” said Doug Bodger, who had an inadvertent role in the first Maple Leaf goal, scored by Berezin after he took a pass from Sundin.

“Our goalies are too. But if you get guys in there in front of the net, they’re blocking guys and getting screen shots and deflections, and they go off your leg. They call them garbage goals, and tonight they got them and that’s not what we’ve been getting.”

The Kings are nine for 106 on the power play, worst in the NHL, and much of the blame has been placed on an inability to station anyone close enough to the net to take out a little trash.

On Toronto’s first goal, Bodger was evicting Berezin from the crease when Sundin sent the puck from behind the net on the power play.

“He just kind of threw it out and it hit my heel and went on the stick of Berezin,” Bodger said. “He was falling down.”

On his way to the ice, Berezin sent the puck past Storr for a 1-0 lead.

The way things have been going lately for the Kings, that might have been enough.

“We’ve been in that situation the last two years,” Sundin said. “You can tell they’re struggling and want to get off to a good start, to get a lead. And they can’t get one.”

For a change, though, the Kings came back.

They answered with a short-handed goal by Vladimir Tsyplakov at 7:59 of the third period for a 1-1 tie.

“That was great for us, to get that goal,” Bodger said. “Even when they did get that goal in the second period, we didn’t get down.”

That came later, when Berezin sneaked in behind the defense and tipped in Sylvain Cote’s shot from near the blue line for a 2-1 lead just over three minutes later. Berezin was actually trying to get out of the way of the shot and it hit his stick and beat Storr.

“It was a lucky goal,” Bodger said. “You can’t get down. You have to battle back.”

But . . .

“Of course, on a fragile team like ours, you have negative thoughts going through your head. Guys didn’t give up. The pucks that went in were deflections, things that we’re not getting.”

A team that is 1-9 in its last 10 games, 2-12-1 in its last 15, tends to have a fragile psyche.

Teams that have turned things around, as Toronto has in going from last season’s 8-13-4 through 25 games to 14-9-2, tend to get a tail wind from a tipped-in goal.

And from a goal that’s waved off, as was one by the Kings’ Craig Johnson in the first period, with Josh Green in the crease.

“It gives you a kind of a boost,” Joseph said. “I never saw [Green], so it’s kind of like a reprieve, a second chance that you weren’t expecting.”

There were no second chances for the Kings. For that matter, few first chances, and then, when Yushkevich banged in a shot from near the blue line to make it 3-1, with Steve Thomas screening Storr on the play, there was no chance at all.

“We took two bad penalties and they get two power-play goals and that’s it,” said the Kings’ Ray Ferraro, who took the penalty that prompted the third power-play goal, shortly after Mark Visheau took a penalty that preceded the second.

“That’s what happens when you’re struggling. You keep shooting yourself in the foot.”

While others are shooting the puck into the net.