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Sunday, February 8, 2009

The Montreal Canadiens fall 5-2 to the Toronto Maple Leafs



Before the game Toronto goalie Vesa Toskala was facing alot of criticism by Leafs G.M. Brian Burk and Leafs coach Ron Wilson."He has been inconsistent at best,A team in our situation, we require solid effort from our goalies every single night and that hasn't necessarily been the case." Wilson said before the game.Toskala answered to all the criticism by making 31 saves on 33 shots,which would lead to a 5-2 victory for the Leafs. Toskala's most important save of the game was when the Leafs were leading 2-1 and Chris Higgins got a breakaway late in the Second period, Higgins shot the puck into the glove hand of Toskala."I don't waste my energy on what goes on in the media, I'm just focused on playing hockey," said Toskala. "It doesn't matter what goes on outside."

"Mitchell passes the puck to Van Ryn to Schenn he shoots he scores, First goal for Shenn."Jim Hustin said duruing the CBC broadcast of Toronto A.t Montreal. Schenn who scored 0 goals all season finaly got a goal on the score board last night which I'm sure he's happy about that."Yeah, they let me know that I hadn't scored a goal yet this year, so it was definitely nice to get it, and there's no better place than in Montreal versus the Canadiens on a Saturday night," said Schenn, the fifth overall pick in last June's draft.The headline all week was of a showdown between Toronto's Mikhail Grabovski(Former Hab player) and Montreal's Sergei Kostitsyn, who have some fire boiling ever since Grabovski was traded to the Leafs.But both of the coaches didn't put them out at the same time, except for a short period of time during a second-period Leafs power play."Mikhail handled it really well," said Wilson. "It was all talk."

Luke Shenn,Nikolai Kulemin, Jeff Finger and Jason Blake(2 in the game) scored the goals for the Leafs in the win.Matt D'Agostini and Tom Kostopoulos scored for Montreal and Carey Price made 36 saves in the lose."Where do I start?" exasperated coach Guy Carbonneau said of his team's weak effort. "We've said since September that if you want to win in this league, you have to compete and you need good goaltending.We had that, but now we're struggling on every front. We have a tough time scoring goals and every time we make a mistake, it's in our net. That's not a good combination." The Canadiens next game will be on Monday in Calgary against the Flames at 9:00 Pm E.T, 7:00Pm P.T on Snet-W and RDS.

Written By Andrew Di Pardo

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