Despite a slew of injuries, Toronto Maple Leafs coach Paul Maurice thinks his team played its best game of the season its last time out.
The Leafs will look to build off an encouraging victory Saturday when they host the Vancouver Canucks.
Toronto (20-19-6) beat Eastern Conference-leading Buffalo 4-2 on Tuesday, despite being without forwards Mike Peca (broken leg), Darcy Tucker (foot), Kyle Wellwood (groin), Alexei Ponikarovsky (shoulder) and Nik Antropov (sprained ankle), and defenseman Ian White (shoulder).
Jeff O’Neill scored twice and Mats Sundin assisted on both of those goals to lead the Leafs.
“That was a huge win for us based on what we’re going through,” Maurice said. “We don’t have a lot of veterans in there right now, but the ones that we do played really well tonight. This was our guttiest performance.”
Alex Steen added a goal and an assist and has five goals and four assists during a four-game point streak. Toronto has won three of its last five games and is tied with Tampa Bay for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East.
“Tonight we saw a lot of good signs,” said Sundin, who moved ahead of former captain Dave Keon and into third place on the team’s all-time assists list with 495. “We have a lot of guys injured, but a lot of the young guys played well. And we need the veteran guys that are here to keep playing well.”
Toronto will hit the road for three games after Saturday’s contest. Tuesday’s victory in Buffalo opened a stretch in which the Maple Leafs play nine of 11 away from home.
The Canucks (24-19-1), meanwhile, had their season-high seven-game winning streak snapped with a 5-2 loss to Minnesota on Thursday. Taylor Pyatt and Willie Mitchell scored for Vancouver, which failed to score three goals for just the second time since its win streak started.
“I didn’t think we had a strong first period,” Vancouver’s Markus Naslund told the team’s official Web site. “I think that was the biggest difference. We came back a little bit in the second, but it wasn’t enough. Against a disciplined team like Minnesota we made too many turnovers and individual mistakes.”
Saturday’s game opens a four-game road trip that will also take the Canucks to Montreal, Ottawa and Buffalo. Vancouver has won three straight away from home after a six-game road losing streak.
“Nobody wants to lose and we had a good thing going here for awhile,” said defenseman Kevin Bieksa, who assisted on Mitchell’s goal. “We’ve got a travel day tomorrow to sit back and think about tonight and get refocused for a big road trip going into the (All-Star) break.”
Toronto and Vancouver are meeting for the first time since Jan. 10 of last season, when the Canucks earned a 4-3 victory to snap a five-game winless stretch in the series.
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