GOAL SCORERS
TOR: M. Frattin (06:30 - 2nd) , M. Grabovski (11:45 - 3rd) , M. Grabovski (PPG, 19:07 - 3rd)
MTL: E. Cole (07:16 - 1st)
Friday night in Montreal, 2 days after the Leafs 5-4 loss to the Blackhawks, Brian Burke announced that he had fired Ron Wilson and replaced him with former Stanley cup champion Randy Carlyle. The following day, the Leafs GM had a press conference to go into detail about this coaching change.
"It was time," said Burke. "Every coach has a shelf life.I've never had a team fall off a cliff like this in my life. I've seen dips, slumps, rough patches, but this is akin to an 18-wheeler going off a cliff. I don't know what happened. I'm bewildered by it. It's like someone hit me with a two-by-four. I've never had this before where a team just plain, flat out goes into a free fall." Carlyle gave his thoughts on joining the Leafs.
"I sense the club is very tense," Carlyle said ."The confidence level is at a low. My responsibility as head coach is to pick these guys up. To get them feeling better about themselves."
So now onto the game between the 15th place Canadiens and the 13th place Maple Leafs. 8 minutes into the game, Paciorettys shot was deflected to Desharnais at the side of the net and he centred it to Cole and he scored to make it 1-0 Montreal. 7 minutes into the second, the Leafs won the draw in the offensive zone right to Fratton and he fired a shot past Price to tie the game at 1-1. 12 minutes into the second, MacArthur dropped the puck for Grabovski in the slot and he fired a shot over the glove of Price to give the Leafs a 2-1 lead. Grabovski would add a late goal as the Leafs beat the Habs 3-1 in Randy Carlyles coaching debut. "It's obviously a nice way to start," Carlyle said. "I thought our team put out an effort. It's impressive when you can go into the other team's building and hold them to under 25 shots and score two big goals in the third to eke out a win."
"I asked them to skate and not worry about anything but what our focus was, which was to win the game. We stayed with our game plan. We played hard, we got some breaks and our key guys scored some goals." In the loss, it was another solid game for Carey Price as he made 39 saves."It was one of those games that could have gone either way," Montreal defenseman Josh Gorges said. "Unfortunately, we made a mistake on their second goal. We left a defenseman (Yannick Weber) out to dry and the next thing, it's in the back of your net." Gustavsson made 21 saves in a 3-1 Leafs win that will now put them back in the playoff hunt as they only sit 3 points back of the Jets in 13th in the East. As for the Habs (15th), they sit 10 points back of Winnipeg for 8th with only 16 games to go. So unless the Habs can win (an unlikely amount of) 13 games, they will not make the Playoffs.
Written By Andrew Di Pardo
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