BOSTON -- The Toronto Maple Leafs were the untimely
victims of some rare shootout success by the Boston Bruins.
Brad Boyes scored the lone goal of the shootout and Tim Thomas
stopped all three attempts that came his way as the Bruins
secured a 3-2 victory over the Maple Leafs, whose playoff hopes
took a major hit.
Boston had dropped eight of its nine shootouts this season, but
got a nice lift from Boyes when the rookie beat goaltender
Jean-Sebastien Aubin with a wrister to the glove side in the
second round of the bonus format.
"(Boyes has) been a bright light in a season that has been
filled with adversity," Bruins coach Mike Sullivan said. "With
all of the personnel change, he's been given an opportunity and,
to his credit, he's taking advantage of it."
Thomas, who finished with 31 saves, sealed the victory with a
splits save on Alexei Ponikarovsky.
"There's a great nucleus of players here and they're all very
young," Sullivan said. "They've come a long way and they've
shown so much improvement since training camp. Now they've
become the core of the hockey team."
Captain Mats Sundin secured one point for Toronto, when he
forced overtime with 13 seconds remaining in the third period.
"I was just thinking to myself, 'Let's just get to the shootout
because we're so good at them,'" Thomas joked. "We had the
little break before the overtime and that helped a lot."
The Maple Leafs (37-32-7) still trail the Tampa Bay Lightning by
seven points for the final playoff berth in the Eastern
Conference with only six games remaining.
"It was 2-1 with (13) seconds to go and we scored and made it
2-2," said Aubin, who made 25 saves. "We kind of stole a point
there. It would have been great to get the extra point, but I
think with the tie that we got, we have to be building positive
from that."
Toronto dropped to 3-7 in shootouts this season with two of
those wins coming against the Bruins.
"We can't seem to find a way to win in those shootouts," said
Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn, whose team also fell in a shootout
to Buffalo on Monday. "Those are two big points. They both
went to shootouts and obviously we haven't done very well
there."
Mariusz Czerkawski and Glen Murray scored in regulation for
Boston, which snapped a four-game losing streak.