Leafs weather storm

By LANCE HORNBY -- Toronto Sun Since becoming Maple Leafs coach more than 100 games ago, Pat Quinn never has felt the need to practice a 4-on-3 defensive drill.
"But we will now," Quinn said with a chuckle last night after Toronto encountered the new National Hockey League four-aside overtime format with Igor Korolev in the penalty box.
The Leafs survived that and somehow hung on to a 3-3 tie with the Carolina Hurricanes after blowing a two-goal lead.
With the Air Canada Centre press box abuzz with trade rumours, the jitters must have carried to the ice. The Leafs were charged with 33 giveaways, almost double that of Carolina, and missed two breakaways that followed goals by the visitors.
"We were kind of brain dead out there," Quinn said of breakdowns that extended right to goaltender Curtis Joseph.
But Joseph also made some huge stops, while Alyn McCauley and Cory Cross each had his first goal of the season. Other Leafs walked a fine line between brilliant and bonehead plays.
The Leafs led 2-1 after the first period and went ahead 3-1 early in the second. But Carolina tied it on second-period goals by Gary Roberts and Jeff Daniels.
Toronto's Yanic Perreault and Carolina's Andrei Kovalenko had the other goals.
For McCauley, his perfect wrist shot past Arturs Irbe in the first period ended almost an eight-month span between goals, with a serious bout of post-concussion syndrome in between.
"It was more like a half-ton off my back," McCauley said of manouevring in position to bury a Tie Domi pass to tie it 1-1. "But some of the guys told me before the game that tonight was the night."
That wasn't to be the case for first-line right winger Steve Thomas, however, as his goal slump reached nine games and the talk heated up of free-agent Dmitri Khristich's arrival. But Thomas continues to do the little things right and leads the Leafs with seven assists.
"There's 73 games left, I'm getting points and we're winning," Thomas said, looking at the bright side.
Cross, showing he can do more than play physically, came back from a knee injury for his first goal in a year, knocking in a Sergei Berezin rebound.
Perreault, whose power-play tip established a 3-1 lead and gave the Leafs five consecutive games with a man-advantage goal, also was fingered on seven giveaways.
Joseph, beaten on a great skate-to-stick puck-control move by Kovalenko just 47 seconds into the game, had problems with his lumber all night. He handed the Hurricanes the tying goal late in the second period, electing not to switch his grip and allowing a weak pass to be picked off.
"Bad decision," he muttered at least three times of the ensuing goal by Daniels.
Carolina's second goal, by the crease-crashing Roberts, was the eighth power-play goal in six games Toronto has surrendered.

Key shot-block
Despite the field of open ice to start overtime, the Hurricanes couldn't put the Leafs away. Danny Markov had a key shot-block and Berezin raced back to stop Sami Kapanen from a clear rush.
Though few teams have taken the bait of a sure point and gone out in overtime to run and gun, there was plenty of excitement jammed into five minutes last night.
"We have some great forwards on this team and we should be able to use our speed in overtime to generate scoring chances," defenceman Dimitri Yushkevich said.
The Leafs lost Todd Warriner to an undetermined knee injury.

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