David Clarkson rescues Leafs vs. Flames: Cox
It was more anxiousness than anticipation.
After a season in which all that could go wrong for David Clarkson had gone wrong, what malady or mishap would stop him this time?
A trap door under the ice? A stick snapping in two? The lights suddenly going out at the ACC? An undone skate lace to trip him up?
A quick double check — was he even going the right way?
In the sixth minute of the third period on Tuesday night, the hard-luck Leaf forward found himself alone and clear from the red line, about as roomy and comfortable a breakaway as one can imagine. Almost a penalty shot.
Easy, right?
Not in this season. Nothing has been easy for Clarkson after it seemed last July his decision to come back to his hometown was a perfect match between his type of grinding, hard-nosed hockey and the team he had cheered for as a boy growing up in the west end.
Four goals in 54 games prior to this contest against the Calgary Flames had of course, left Clarkson exposed to the bitter whims of public opinion after signing a seven-year free-agent contract with the club last summer.
Some had decided he was already a bust. It was hard to argue.
So many times during the season had he appeared poised to get his game in gear, and every time he had fallen back into the same mysterious state of groggy inertia.
Suddenly, with the Leafs leading Calgary 2-1 in a game the home team had to have, here was a chance for Clarkson to make something very positive happen and possibly help end the franchise’s worst losing streak in almost three decades.
He skated in without a Calgary player anywhere nearby to bother him. He stared down goalie Karri Ramo, made a move to his forehand, and Ramo flopped forward, seemingly fooled by the move of a player who hadn’t fooled any goalies this season.
When the puck slid under Ramo, there seemed to be a brief pause, a moment of disbelief. Then the explosion of noise. Clarkson himself didn’t over-react. He hardly reacted at all.
Act like you’ve been there before, right?
That turned out to be the winning tally in a 3-2 Leaf victory, two words that haven’t been written in sequence for weeks. After eight consecutive losses in regulation, the blue and white stopped the bleeding against the 26th-best team in the league, albeit a Flames team that has been giving many clubs fits over the past two months.
The Leafs were solid, nothing more, but solid was a massive improvement after an octuplet of games in which they played one disastrous first period after another, or had been foiled by bad goaltending, or had fallen prey to one costly on-ice decision or another.
On this night, goals came not only from Clarkson but from Jay McClement and David Bolland, allowing the top line of Phil Kessel, Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk to experience victory without having to play starring roles.
Jonathan Bernier likewise didn’t have to channel his inner Turk Broda and steal another win, although he came up with some important stops in the final five minutes of play and made 22 saves in all.
Instead, the Leafs delivered a competent checking effort, one in which they weren’t trapped in their own end for sequence after sequence. The Flames don’t have the offensive weapons to scare anyone, and so it really was a bit of a breather for the Leafs after a long series of challenging games.
Case in point: with just over two minutes left, Paul Byron picked off a poorly executed exit pass from Carl Gunnarsson high in the Leaf zone. The play seemed very dangerous, at least until Byron put a hard pass into the skates of Mike Cammalleri, and the Flames lost possession.
Against a better team, a more skilful team, that turnover would at least have meant a significant scoring chance. Maybe a goal.
But not against the Flames. Still, the visitors did press to the end, and misfortune seemed poised to frown on the Leafs again when, with 50 seconds left in regulation, Tyler Bozak took dead aim at an abandoned Calgary net and hit the right post from 100 feet.
With 20 seconds left, defenceman Kris Russell, who had scored the second Flames goal, closed in from the left faceoff circle with a Grade A scoring chance. And shot wide.
The win, of course, didn’t save Toronto’s season. But it kept them more than mathematically alive, and allowed them to pass faltering Washington and move one point out of wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. The team the Leafs are now chasing, Columbus, lost in overtime to Colorado, but collected a point to stay one point ahead with two games in hand.
The Leafs have five games left, while the Blue Jackets started a tough stretch on Tuesday night in which they’ll play eight games in 12 days, including three back-to-back scenarios.
So we’ll see. The eight-game slide did horrific damage to the Leaf playoff chances, and Randy Carlyle’s club still requires at least four wins and a lot of help to gain an invitation to the post-season dance.
Perhaps this was a turning point. Perhaps signs of life from Clarkson will prove meaningful.
Perhaps that breakaway, that goal, was some kind of new beginning after dark forecasts in recent days that the end was near.
