Dein erstes Forum » TORONTO (AP) Maple Leafs coach

Mike Babcock acknowledged his team didn’t play very well Thursday night www.bruinsshoponline.com , and his players know things could become much more difficult if they have to deal with another injury absence for Auston Matthews.Tyler Bozak scored the shootout winner in the first round and Toronto squeezed out a 4-3 victory over the New York Islanders after Matthews left the game. He tipped in Jake Gardiner’s shot to tie it 3-all with 3:29 remaining in the third period, but exited with 1:06 to go in regulation favoring his right shoulder after being sandwiched by Adam Pelech and Cal Clutterbuck.Matthews did not return. The 20-year-old Toronto star missed six games in December with a concussion as the Maple Leafs went 2-4 without him. He sat out four games in November with an undisclosed upper-body injury.”Clearly he’s a big part of our team and going down the stretch we’re going to need him, so hopefully it’s not too bad,” teammate Nazem Kadri said.Babcock didn’t give much of an update and said the club would know more about Matthews’ status on Friday at practice.Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly had the other Maple Leafs goals, and Frederik Andersen made 32 saves. Toronto (38-20-5) has won eight straight at home for the first time since the 2006-07 season.”Obviously, we weren’t very good,” Babcock said. ”Anybody who watches us regularly knows that we weren’t that good. Saw it coming yesterday in practice, talked about it then and our preparation wasn’t good enough.”Bozak beat Jaroslav Halak high blocker side for his third game-deciding shootout goal of the season. Bozak is tied for the NHL lead in shootout winners.”He is unbelievable at it. I mean, he always talks and jokes about it Boston Bruins T-Shirts Womens , how good he was back in the day, and he still hasn’t lost that touch,” Marner said. ”He’s been great for us in that category, but I mean, I think we’ve got to stop going that route. Thankfully we have him or else we might be in trouble.”Ryan Pulock, Mathew Barzal and Jordan Eberle scored for the Islanders (29-26-7), and Halak turned aside 28 shots. New York, tied with Columbus for the second Eastern Conference wild card, dropped to 4-6-2 since the All-Star break and 13-15-3 on the road this season.With his three points Boston Bruins Hoodies Womens , Barzal has a team-leading 65 and a 14-point lead over Brock Boeser of the Vancouver Canucks in the NHL’s rookie scoring race.Barzal has eight games with three or more points this season, one shy of Bryan Trottier’s franchise rookie record.”It’s unfortunate we couldn’t score (in overtime). It’s unfortunate to lose that extra point,” Barzal said.”We weren’t shy to push the pace early. (Clutterbuck) and (Casey Cizikas) finishing checks early kind of set the tone for the rest of us. I thought we played a pretty good game.”Pulock opened the scoring at 8:39 of the first period, one-timing Thomas Hickey’s feed past Andersen, who appeared out of position on the play after Eberle bumped into him. Barzal picked up the secondary assist.The Islanders’ rookie then doubled New York’s lead, backhanding the rebound of Anthony Beauvillier’s shot past Andersen for his 13th goal at 11:48.Marner got the Maple Leafs on the board at 17:39. After picking up a feed from Kadri, he showed patience while waiting for Halak to make the first move and then beat the goaltender between the pads for his 15th of the season. The goal gave Marner 10 in his last 16 games.Moments after the Islanders hit the post twice, Rielly tied it at 2 after taking Connor Brown’s pass and beating Halak high on the glove side for his sixth of the season at 1:28 of the third.New York responded 99 seconds later as Eberle’s centering pass redirected off Nikita Zaitsev’s skate and past Andersen. Barzal got the primary assist on Eberle’s 21st of the season.NOTES: Kadri’s first-period assist was the 300th point of his NHL career. He became the 35th player in Maple Leafs history to reach 300 points with the club.UP NEXTIslanders: At the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night.Maple Leafs: Conclude their three-game homestand against Boston on Saturday.— TAMPA, Fla. — December divisional matches rarely register high on the hype meter around NHL circles.But make no mistakes Boston Bruins Hats Womens , when the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, plenty of eyes will be peering in to see what happens when the top two teams in the league faceoff for the first of four meetings this season.Tampa Bay has won seven consecutive games and 10 of the past 11 to open-up a six-point lead on Toronto in the league and Atlantic Division standings. The Lightning are the highest scoring team in the league with 128 goals while averaging a league-best 4.00 goals per game. The Maple Leafs are second in goals scored with 113 while averaging 3.65 per game, third best in the league.Article continues below ...Both teams are well aware that this meeting may not be just any other mid-season matchup.“They’re setting the standard for the National Hockey League and we’d like to be where they’re at,” Toronto head coach Mike Babcock told Sportsnet.ca. “We want our young guys to get the experience quicker so that we can be a good playoff team quicker, but in the meantime, we’ve got to win regular season games.”The two teams appear to be on a collision course for a playoff meeting in April, with the current playoff format all but guaranteeing a second-round meeting if the standings remain the same at the end of the regular season.So it’s never too early to want to send any kind of a message in a game that figures to feature more energy and buzz than normal in a pre-Christmas matchup.“Potentially you could see them down the road,” Maple Leafs’ center Nazim Kadri told the Toronto Sun. “We’re going to give them all the credit in the world but we want to go in there and beat them.”Tampa Bay could see the return of Vezina Trophy finalist goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has been out since Nov. 14 with a fractured foot. Vasilevskiy took part in the full practice on Wednesday Custom Boston Bruins Jerseys , a day after Eddie Pasquale was reassigned to the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League.Lightning head coach Jon Cooper did not say Vasilevskiy would start against Toronto, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t either, even with some hesitancy in throwing the team’s top netminder back in the crease after a month-long absence.“It’s not as much the injury as it is the cardio and how he’s feeling in that respect,” Cooper said. “I’ll sit down with him in a little bit and see how he feels, but he looked good out there (at practice).”Louis Domingue, who has started 13 of the 14 games in Vasilevskiy’s absence, has won six consecutive games and posted an 11-2 record in that span.No matter who is in goal for Tampa Bay, however, it’s more about how the team plays in front of the net www.sabresshoponline.com , more than anything else.“The more we can distance ourselves from the team behind, the better,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. “(Thursday’s) going to be a tough game, we know that, probably the toughest one of the year. We need our A-game.”