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Stralman lifts Maple Leafs over Bruins

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:04 AM BOSTON (Ticker) -- It took 89 games for the Boston Bruins to squander a two-goal lead in the Claude Julien era.

The Bruins fizzled after a rousing start and defenseman Anton Stralman snapped a tie midway through the third period to help the Toronto Maple Leafs claim a 4-2 victory on Thursday.

"I don't think we played well from start to finish, and that's disappointing," Julien said. "We have warned our players for the last two days that this was a hard-working team that we were going to play tonight, and if we weren't ready to come ready to play and work hard, then it was going to be a long night, and they had to find out the hard way."

Stralman scored with 9:14 left in the third, helping the Maple Leafs end their five-game losing streak. Fellow blue-liner Mike Van Ryn scored on a power play in the second period and Nik Antropov tallied for the third straight game 2 1/2 minutes later to erase a two-goal deficit and send Boston to its fourth loss in five games.

"You stick to it, and every once and a while, you make a silly mistake," Toronto coach Ron Wilson said. "But it is a young team and they're not going to give up and go, 'Here we go again from last year or the year before.' This group seems to really enjoy playing with each other, and tonight was a lot of fun."

Patrice Bergeron netted his first goal of the season and Blake Wheeler followed 31 seconds later in the first against Vesa Toskala, who made 20 of his 26 saves over the final two periods.

"I'm obviously happy it's behind me and I can look forward now that I got that first one, but I'm not happy about the way we played," Bergeron said. "Obviously, we need these points, especially against a team in our division."

Bergeron missed all but 10 games last season with a concussion, so Julien saw his young center's breakthrough as something on which to build.

"That was certainly a positive thing tonight," Julien said. "It was nice to see Patrice score that goal because he has been playing well. He has been playing hard and getting scoring chances and they just have not been going in for him.

"So hopefully this is something that will get him going in that department and give him the confidence that he needs to score goals for us."

A hard check by Milan Lucic on Van Ryn just 20 seconds into the second session seemingly served as a wake-up call for Toronto. Lucic, who was second among rookies in hits last season with 181, made hard contact with Van Ryn that caused a pane of glass to shatter, delaying the game for 10 minutes.

"I'm still itchy, it seems like (the glass) is caught everywhere on me," Van Ryn said. "(Lucic) is a heavy guy. It's not like it hurt or anything. I came back here, got undressed and the training staff vacuumed out my equipment real quick. I just got dressed and (the trainers) helped me get back and I didn't miss a shift."

Less than six minutes of game time later, Van Ryn fired a wrist shot past goaltender Tim Thomas from the left side after grabbing the rebound of Niklas Hagman's shot with the man advantage to draw the Maple Leafs within 2-1.

"It felt great. It was nice," Van Ryn said. "I've had a lot of opportunities early on to score and it is just nice to get one out of the way, and it is nice to contribute."

Antropov netted his fourth of the season to forge a tie at 8:30, extending his goal-scoring streak to three games. The 28-year-old native of Kazakhstan received a pass from Alexei Ponikarovsky and slid the puck under Thomas' pads from the doorstep.

"The last game we played, we were down 2-0 after the first, the same as tonight ," Antropov said of the Maple Leafs' 3-2 shootout loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday. "We battled back and showed character again, and that's a huge result for us."

Thomas, who turned aside 33 shots, prevented the potential go-ahead goal with a brilliant save on rookie Nikolai Kulemin from in front three minutes into the third. But Stralman netted his first tally of the season six minutes later to give Toronto its first lead.

"It was a bad shot, actually, and I was surprised it went in," Stralman said. "It wasn't supposed to go (between Thomas' pads). It was supposed to go high shelf, but sometimes you get lucky."

Hagman scored an empty-netter on the power play with three seconds left in the game to secure the victory.

"We played really hard," Wilson said. "A couple of mistakes in the first period in a span of about a minute that they took advantage of, but I really liked our effort, our hustle.

"We did a good job of killing penalties, got a big power-play goal and I really love getting one on an empty net at the end because it was a power-play goal and it helps our stats."