Eat Sleep Leafs

Tough breaks all around in Carolina.

Not only have they lost ten straight, but the injuries are starting to pile up.

Eric Staal missed Wednesday’s game versus Florida with an upper body injury, the first time that’s happened since March 19, 2004 (349 straight). And then in the 3-0 loss to the Panthers, the Canes lost Tuomo Ruutu and Ray Whitney, who both suffered upper body injuries.

Tough luck indeed.

The Canes recalled Zack Boychuk, the 14th pick in the 2008 draft to make up for their absences.

Confusing times for the Canes as they search desperately for a way out. This a team that went all the way to the conference finals last season, only to start this season with a gigantic thud.

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Not much has gone right for the Hurricanes early this season and that includes the aforementioned Staal.

For the second year in a row, the Thunder Bay native was off to a slow start before the injury with only five points in thirteen games.

Check back to last year and it's nothing new.

 

Just 10 points in his first nineteen games last year.

 

 

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The Leafs had their big skid earlier this season and slowly seem to be crawling out.

In each of the last three games, Toronto has dug its way out from a deficit, forced OT and lost.

A point yes, but they’d like to find two again sometime soon.

“We’re not ever going to give up,” Matt Stajan said.

 

“I think obviously you want to be winning going into the third period. You want to play with the lead. It’s better than chasing after it like we’ve had to the last few. [But] it shows that we can put up goals when we need them and we never quit. I just think we’ve got to put it all together and our starts are definitely something we need to work on as a group collectively we know that.”

The Leafs have scored just five goals in the first period this season. Total.

“That’s something that we have to strive to get,” John Mitchell said of an early lead.

“And enough’s been said about us trying to get the first goal, we just have to go out and do it.”

Once all year have the Leafs scored first. That was in Montreal two games ago.

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Ron Wilson’s squad has scored seven goals in the last three games.

And each goal has come off either the stick of or was created by a defenseman putting it on the net.

Two guys who’ve done it the best early; Francois Beauchemin and Ian White. Both sit the in the top 10 among defenseman in shots.

White scored the lone goal in the 2-1 loss to Tampa on Tuesday, his third of the year.

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The number one job belongs to Jonas Gustavsson at the moment.

And because of that, the pressure has lifted off  of Vesa Toskala’s shoulders.

A knee injury sidelined him for a couple weeks in October, and the break seemed to perform two tasks. First it healed the injury, but secondly and maybe more importantly, it looks as though it’s refreshed him mentally after a mediocre start to the season.

“Yeah I feel good,” Toskala said. “Body feels alright and yeah I’m ready to play. I feel good. I want to start a new season now.”

The Leafs are a noticeably different team now than the one Toskala left on October 12th.

“Confident,” Toskala said of the change. “Like now if we get scored [on], we score back. We’re able to score when we’re a couple goals down and tie the games at the end of the games. So that’s good. And we’re fighting hard.”

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Jeff Finger will finally return to the lineup on Friday, after sitting as a healthy scratch the last six games.

A (-6) rating in four games probably hasn’t helped his cause, nor has the team’s improved play in his absence.

The Michigan native signed a 4-year, $14 million deal with the Leafs two summers ago.


-J.Siegel
Follow me on Twitter: jonas640