Home ice no haven for Leafs

Who will be the next Leaf to score at the Air Canada Centre?

Nik Antropov? Niklas Hagman? John Tavares?

The way the Maple Leafs are serving up doughnuts at home, and plummeting in the standings, Toronto might be misfiring just enough to eventually draft the league's next potential offensive star.

All it will take is a few more games like last night, when Toronto was shut out 2-0 by the Carolina Hurricanes, making a winner out of former Leafs coach Paul Maurice in his homecoming.

It was the second consecutive game the Leafs have been blanked on home ice. Nashville won by that same 2-0 score a week ago and the Leafs have now pushed their scoreless drought to more than 127 minutes at home.

"If you don't score, you don't win," Antropov said succinctly.

Antropov knows of what he speaks. His own goalless streak has reached 14 games but he's not alone. Lee Stempniak has one goal in the last nine games. Matt Stajan and Alexei Ponikarovsky have gone five and four games, respectively, without finding the mesh.

"Any time you don't score for three or four games, you feel rattled. That's what I'm feeling right now. It's been more than 10 games," said Antropov, who played only three minutes in the third period, squeezed out as coach Ron Wilson looked for line combinations that might get the offence going.

While the Leafs have often been the authors of their own misfortune in losing 10 of their last 13 games, they had a co-conspirator last night in Carolina goaltender Cam Ward. He was terrific, making 35 saves for his second shutout of the season. He made a handful of exceptional stops, robbing Hagman and Ponikarovsky in particular.

"We tried different things, wraparounds, rebounds, they weren't going in the net," said Ponikarovsky. "I thought on some of them, he got lucky. That's good for him."

Wilson said his team seemed intent on trying to make low-percentage, spectacular plays such as long-bomb passes, something he equated to a golfer trying to sink 60-foot putts "that Tiger Woods can't make."

"It looks pretty but it's totally ineffective. Good teams make five or six passes to come up the ice, not two," he said. "If you've made one long pass, unless you put the guy in on a breakaway, all you've done is maybe isolate one guy on one of their defencemen. Then he has to wait for the cavalry to show up, and by then it's too late."

While scoring is a problem, a couple of brain cramps late in the second period cost Toronto going the other way.

Tomas Kaberle thoughtlessly launched a puck into the stands, taking a delay of game penalty that set up Carolina's first goal, a power-play marker by Joe Corvo. Then, in the dying seconds of that middle frame, Ponikarovsky turned the puck over at his own blue line. Matt Cullen grabbed that gift, fired a pass to Chad LaRose at the edge of the crease and he potted a morale-crusher, making it 2-0 with five seconds remaining.

Wilson called them "inexcusable" mistakes.

The Canes came into town riding a five-game losing skid but they made a winner out of Maurice on his return to Toronto. He was fired by the Leafs at the end of last season.

Early in the game, a tribute to the former coach was played on the replay screen but drew only a tepid response from the fans.

"I've got to be honest with you, it was one of the rare times I did notice something on the Jumbotron and I did appreciate it, even if it was just my wife and kids (clapping). I appreciated it. Very nice, very classy," said Maurice.