Eat Sleep Leafs

A huge sigh of relief circled through the Leafs dressing room following a 3-0 win in Montreal.

First was news that rookie goaltender Jonas Gustavsson was fine, after he left Tuesday’s game following the first period with a minor heart scare.

 

Second of course, was the win.

Gustavsson stopped all eight shots he faced in the first period, but something wasn’t right when he came off the ice during the first intermission.

His heart was racing at an elevated level.

“He had that same sensation he had at training camp, where his heart started to race, but it came down and it came down on it’s own in the room, but we wanted to be cautious,” a relieved Ron Wilson said following the game.

Midway through the second period, the Bell Centre ambulance pulled up in front of the Leafs dressing room and Gustavsson was taken by paramedics to a nearby hospital.

“Obviously any situation with your heart can turn out to be serious, so he’ll spend [Tuesday] night in the hospital, go back to Toronto and have the cardiologist look at it, but we don’t expect it to be anything serious or long-term,” added Wilson.

Down by the dressing room during that second period, there was definite air of concern amongst Leafs personnel as doctors examined Gustavsson. The concern level calmed noticeably though when word circled around that everything was seemlingly fine.

It was during medical testing at training camp this fall that Gustavsson first experienced a heart scare, a scare that eventually required an ablation procedure which involves the heart.

“We’re all a little concerned and worried that he couldn’t get his heart-beat down and couldn’t seem to settle down and relax,” Mike Komisarek said of the team mindset when Gustavsson couldn’t return. “He played a huge twenty minutes for us, got us off on a great start.”

With Gustavsson ailing, Joey MacDonald grabbed the ball in the final two periods, under strange circumstances no less.

“I didn’t know until three minutes before I had to go on the ice,” said MacDonald of getting the call, “so you don’t really think about it then so it takes the pressure off. We’re up 2-0 and you knew they were going to come out and throw everything at the net, especially when they see me in there.”

MacDonald stopped all eighteen shots he faced.

 

He had an inkling that something was wrong when he glanced left at Gustavsson’s stall and saw it sitting empty.

“He wasn’t there so I started stretching a little bit on my own, because he usually doesn’t do that,” a smiling MacDonald said afterwards. “Stretched a little bit, and then Ron came in about four minutes and told me.”

The Leafs travel to Columbus on Wednesday.

-J.Siegel
Follow me on Twitter: jonas640