Leafs shot down by Pitt snipers

PITTSBURGH-From the youngest player in last night's game to the oldest, all anyone could do was be in awe of Sidney Crosby.

The Kid used the Toronto Maple Leafs - one of his favourite patsies - to springboard past a number of career milestones, scoring a goal and adding three assists in vaulting the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 4-1 win at the Mellon Arena.

"There's no question he's probably the top player in the league and he showed it," said 18-year-old Leaf defenceman Luke Schenn. "He took control of the game."

And 41-year-old goalie Curtis Joseph - victimized for Crosby's first goal of the season - could only shake his head.

"Sidney was on tonight," said Joseph. "And he kind of sunk us."

Did he ever. Crosby's goal - a bank shot off Mikhail Grabovski - was the 100th of his career, a game-breaking goal that put a close game out of reach at 12:15 of the third period. His assist on the game's first goal - a beautiful pass to Pascal Dupuis - was the 200th assist of his career. By the time the night was done, Crosby had 302 career points in 219 career game.

"I don't expect four-points nights, but I definitely wanted to score," said Crosby. "I felt like I was doing good things, but the puck wasn't going in."

To boot, Crosby now has 23 points in 13 career games against Toronto.

"He obvious had a little bit of luck on his goal," said Leafs coach Ron Wilson. "He made two great plays on the power play, on those passes. We were aware of that. We just didn't execute very well."

Not to be outdone was Evgeni Malkin with four assists. The Penguins had been misfiring lately so coach Michel Therrien reunited Malkin with Crosby to jump-start the offence.

Malkin's third assist was the 200th point of his 166-game career. And Malkin may like playing against Toronto more than Crosby. He now has 23 points in nine games against Toronto.

Throw in a goal from Miro Satan - who has 51 points in 53 career games against Toronto - and a late goal by Petr Sykora and a Leafs team that was fading in its second game in two nights didn't really have a chance.

The Leafs played a decent road game, slowing the pace and keeping scoring chances to a minimum, but the opportunistic Penguins went 2-for-4 on the power play while the Leafs were 1-for-7.

"We had a number of scoring chances," said Wilson. "Their better players cashed in. We took a couple of bad penalties and it kind of cost us."

Nik Antropov scored his first goal of the season to give the Leafs 1-0 lead and later had a second goal disallowed when video show he directed the puck into the net with his skate.

Wilson shook up his lines in an effort to generate some offence. Nikolai Kulemin was inserted alongside Mikhail Grabovski and Niklas Hagman, a line that had plenty of jump and plenty of opportunities but still came up empty. That moved Jiri Tlusty to Dominic Moore's line with Steen.

John Mitchell was moved to the first line, dumping Alexei Ponikarovsky to the fourth as Wilson continued to send the message that no jobs are safe.

"I want to get Mitchell more ice time," said Wilson. "He competes really hard, he's fast. He's digging in on faceoffs. That's what we want. We want people who are going to compete every single shift."

Also, Carlo Colaiacovo was reinserted on the blue line, with Mike Van Ryn joining the scrubs as a healthy scratch.