News

The chants of “Monster, Monster” went up midway through the first period of last night’s 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild at the Air Canada Centre.

And while Jonas (The Monster) Gustavsson has already captured the imagination of success-starved Toronto Maple Leafs fans, he was hardly the second-coming of Johnny Bower last night as the Leafs (3-8-5) saw their modest two-game winning streak and seven-game point streak snapped.

The script called for another night of the Swedish rookie sending an opposing team home looking at their sticks in frustration. Instead it was four goals and some meaty chances on the Wild’s 30 shots, while Finland’s Niklas Backstrom looked crisp in turning away 37 of Toronto’s 39 shots.

“You’d like to have every goal back,” Gustavsson said. “[But] maybe on my best night I could have one or two goals but I made some good saves sometimes, too.”

The Monster looked mortal at times, though that sometimes coinciding with some ill-advised penalties by his teammates – not a formula success when sporting the worst penalty-killing unit in the NHL.

The Wild (7-10-0) scored first as Martin Havlat was too quick around the back of the net and tucked the puck off a sprawled Gustavsson’s left skate for his second of the season to put Minnesota up 1-0. This with Rickard Wallin serving time for holding a Wild player’s stick on the forecheck.

Toronto forward Alexei Ponikarovsky evened things up 26 seconds later as he beat Backstrom from the top of the circle for his seventh of the season, but even tied 1-1 Gustavsson didn’t look like the goalie who stopped 69-of-72 shots in back-to-back wins Friday and Saturday against Carolina and Detroit.

More than once he was caught out of position, though Minnesota failed to convert.

Leafs head coach Ron Wilson said the issue had more to do with the group in front of his goalie, who played too casually for his liking.

“We’re not good enough to be full of ourselves after a couple of good weeks,” Wilson said. “I was a little disappointed in our approach, but more teaching tools for me.”

If Gustavsson was anything but the essence of Swedish cool, you’d think his recent success was getting to him. But it’s hard to make that case given the 25-year-old can talk about visiting Ikea to furnish his apartment and eat lunch with a straight face.

“I have been there for some Swedish meatballs,” he said earlier yesterday. “It feels like home, everything is Swedish there. I bought some furniture and also had lunch, it was perfect.”

He got a new car the other day too, a nice, sensible, Audi Q5 in a metallic grey.

He can even make playing goalie – a position reserved for the hockey’s odd balls, traditionally – seem about as exciting as selling insurance.

“I heard that rumour too [about goalies being strange],” he said. “I think it’s something you say, but it was more like that before when you played without the mask and everyone thought they were crazy standing there, now it’s the other guys who are crazy.”

The game got away from Toronto when Colton Orr took an ill-advised interference penalty on Wild enforcer Derek Boogaard in retaliation for a clean check on the Leafs’ Tomas Kaberle. With Orr in the box, Ponikarovsky took a delay-of-game penalty as his clearing attempt rifled through the team benches and into the crowd – “a really iffy call,” Wilson said. Minnesota’s Marek Zidlicky scored from the left circle, beating a partially screened Gustavsson low on the short side.

Toronto could never seem to mount any continuous pressure on Backstrom; the likes of Phil Kessel and Jason Blake – on fire in the past week – were barely visible, combining for a single shot between them through two periods.

They were no better in the third, Kessel’s goal late in the third aside. Toronto did finish the game with a 6-on-3 man advantage for the final minute after two Wild players were sent to the box and Toronto pulled Gustavsson, but Backstrom stood tall.

Meanwhile, the big saves that had so inspired Toronto during their modest winning streak didn’t materialize as even-strength goals by Mikko Koivu and Greg Zanon 26 seconds in the second period effectively put the game out of reach, this after the Leafs failed to convert on a pair of power-play chances of their own. An empty net goal by Owen Nolan finished the scoring.

The Leafs, 14th in the East, may have a Monster to call their own, but the chants that came early were nowhere to be heard after the first period.

SCORESHEET

NOTES Toronto Maple Leafs goalie legend and Second World War veteran Johnny Bower read In Flanders Fields last night as part of a pregame Remembrance Day tribute at Air Canada Centre. … Leafs head coach Ron Wilson was pleased Mike Komisarek (charley horse) was able to play last night – if only because it meant he could continue pairing him with Tomas Kaberle, the top-scoring defenceman in the NHL (18 points before last night). “I think it helps he’s playing with a stay-at-home partner like Komisarek,” Wilson said. “We’ve given him free reign to be on the attack all the time and he’s taken advantage of it.” Such optimism might have been misplaced, however, as Komisarek played just six shifts in the opening period before calling it a night because of a “lower-body injury.”

NEXT GAME Friday, at Chicago Blackhawks, 8:30 p.m. EST

TV Rogers Sportsnet (Ont.)