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Aubin, Wellwood help Maple Leafs end skid

Oct 29, 2006 - 2:19 AM MONTREAL (Ticker) -- Jean-Sebastien Aubin made sure the Toronto Maple Leafs would come out on top the next time they were in a shootout with the Montreal Canadiens.

Aubin made 18 saves and turned away six of seven shots in the shootout while teammate Kyle Wellwood scored the game-winning goal as the Maple Leafs posted a 5-4 victory over the rival Canadiens.

Defenseman Tomas Kaberle recorded his first career hat trick as Toronto snapped a three-game losing streak.

"I've never scored a hat trick so I was happy, but it's not about the goals or the points," Kaberle said. "I'm not here to score hat tricks, I'm here to work from the back end and get the passes to my guys."

Toronto lost a 3-2 shootout to Montreal on October 7.

Kaberle, who was tied for fourth in scoring among defensemen in 2005-06, started slowly this season with just two assists in his first 11 games.

But he assisted on Alexei Ponikarovsky's goal 1:44 into the game to give the Maple Leafs an early 1-0 lead.

"We kept it simple, lots of shots, go to the net and good things happen," Kaberle said. "We have to keep it up like this for Monday (vs. Atlanta) and go for another win. We battled hard, sometimes it's better on the road like here in Montreal. It's a big building, a loud building. We got two points and got it done."

Toronto, which was outscored, 18-8, in the past three games, opened a 4-2 lead on Kaberle's third tally with just under eight minutes left in the second period.

"Hopefully this will put us on a roll," Wellwood said. "Two losses to Ottawa were a real wake-up call. We really needed a win and the way we played you wouldn't believe we'd have to do it in a shootout, but Aubin stood on his head and stopped a lot of shots for the win."

Montreal defenseman Sheldon Souray had forged a 4-4 tie with his sixth goal of the season, a slap shot taken from above the left faceoff circle with 3:30 remaining.

"We didn't play very well at all in the first two periods and the shot clock will tell you the story of the game up to that point," Souray said. "We were fortunate to put a couple by him (Aubin) and tie the game but obviously our starts have got to be a lot better."

Kaberle scored first in the shootout before Sergei Samsonov tied it with a wrister between the pads of Aubin. Neither team would score on the next 10 shots before Wellwood faked left and went right, tucking his shot past goaltender David Aebischer.

"I thought we deserved the two points and everybody had a really good game," Wellwood said. "We outplayed them and that was encouraging. We just couldn't score on Aebischer. He let in four goals but he played excellent."

"It was a great win, shootout or not, it's two points," Aubin said. "Today it was fun, but maybe it's a different story the next time. Things went well, I kept challenging them and I didn't back up too early on the shooters."

Aebischer stopped 47 shots, including eight in overtime, before allowing the decisive tally.

"The bottom line is we lost a point against a team in our division, which is never great," Aebischer said. "We came back and got one (point), but we want to win games so we can't be satisfied with the game tonight."