[Recap] Toronto Maple Leafs 4 v. Chicago Blackhawks 6

Mats Sundin sums the game up better than any paper in Toronto could ever hope to:

Up 3-1 in your own building ... that should be a confident team coming out for the third period. Our third period was terrible. It was soft. We took penalties. We sat back. We didn't keep playing with the desire we had.

That is now three two-goal leads that the Leafs have allowed to evaporate this season.

Rosie DiManno showed that maybe she should either choose to solely write about sports or stop dipping her toe into the waters:

Penalties were widely adopted as alibi afterwards – Chicago was 4-for-7 on the power play – but Toronto actually took only two of them in the concluding 20 minutes, exclusive of the spillovers from the second period.

So 4 of 6 goals came while shorthanded but penalties had nothing to do with the outcome? And while they did only take two penalties in the third period one was on John Pohl (a ridiculous hooking call considering Samsonov was holding his stick) which resulted in a 5-3 lead. The other was on Ponikarovsky with a minute left and the Leafs within one and about to pull Raycroft. But they had no bearing on the outcome of the game. Maybe she has been taking writing lessons from Damien. [Update] She also thinks that The Police are overrated. Can we take her computer away from her now? Oh and the Blackhawks only picked up one minor penalty during the game. In this age of no-tolerance refereeing and phantom penalties galore that is actually shocking and nigh on unbelievable.

Anyway, I guess that we can pencil the Leafs in for a win tomorrow night against the Thrashers since they have a 3-0 record of winning after horrible performances such as Saturday night's third period. Then again, they are 1-7 so they are prime to win. Why do the Leafs hate their fans?

The Other End of the Rink
Bill Wirtz was so effective in killing hockey in Chicago that I could not find a Blackhawks blog to highlight. If you know of any let me know.