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Canucks, Luongo shut down Maple Leafs' power play

Jan 14, 2007 - 4:29 AM TORONTO (Ticker) -- Roberto Luongo showed the Toronto Maple Leafs why he is an All-Star.

Luongo helped successfully kill eight penalties and the Vancouver Canucks scored a season-high five power-play goals, including one during a two-man advantage, en route to a 6-1 victory over the undermanned Maple Leafs.

Daniel Sedin had four points, including his 100th career goal, and twin brother Henrik added three assists for the Canucks, who bounced back strong after having a seven-game winning streak snapped Thursday by Minnesota.

Voted by the fans to his second All-Star Game, Luongo came up huge in the opening period, stopping 13-of-14 shots and withstanding four power-play opportunities by Toronto, which entered ranked fifth in the league with the man advantage.

"We could have been down 3-0 (in the first period)," Vancouver captain Markus Naslund said. "That's what you want from a star goaltender. (Luongo) makes the saves when he needs to, and that's why we're winning games."

The 27-year-old Luongo finished with 35 saves to improve to 25-16-1 as Vancouver opened a four-game road trip with its fourth straight road win despite being outshot, 36-21.

"Tonight was one of those games where, luckily, we won the special-teams battle," Luongo said. "We were able to hold the tie going into the first (intermission), and I think that was huge. It could have been a different game if (Toronto) had been able to score right away, but we did a good job on the penalty kill."

Daniel Sedin gave Vancouver a 2-1 lead 39 seconds into the second period. He took a feed from the right corner by his brother and, with his back to net, skated around the right faceoff circle untouched and beat goaltender Andrew Raycroft high to the glove side with a wrist shot.

Vancouver, ranked 24th on the power play, was 5-for-9 with the extra skater.

"I think the last 25 games, (the power play has) been getting better slowly," Henrik Sedin said. "We're moving the puck a lot better now and we're starting to get some seams and some shots to the net. When we move the puck like we did today, it's pretty tough to defend. We've got a lot of good shooters and I just tried to get them the puck."

After defenseman Tomas Kaberle - who was named as an Eastern Conference reserve for the All-Star Game earlier Saturday - went off early in the third period for hooking and the Toronto bench was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, Vancouver took advantage of the two-man edge.

Trevor Linden scored from the right side of the crease off a nifty feed from Naslund for a 3-1 lead 4:39 into the final session, and Taylor Pyatt tallied 13 seconds later to give Vancouver a three-goal bulge.

Defenseman Sami Salo and Naslund, who scored for just the second time in his last 20 games, capped the scoring later in the period.

"Of course it's frustrating when you lose like that on home ice," Toronto captain Mats Sundin said. "It's embarrassing. Specialty teams were the difference tonight. Our power play has got to be better than it was tonight.

"Their power play was good, they scored on almost every chance they had on the power play, and we were very ineffective. We had almost as many chances on the power play as they did to create some more scoring chances and we didn't, and tonight, that was the difference, not goaltending."

With an injured list consisting of eight players, including four of their top 11 scorers, the Maple Leafs hung tough for two periods.

"The 5-on-3 killed us," Toronto center Matt Stajan said. "We played hard in those first two periods, but penalties seemed to ruin the flow of the game. They scored on them and took advantage of them, and we weren't able to capitalize and weren't able to kill them. Special teams mean everything."

Coming off an inspiring 4-2 victory over Buffalo on Thursday, Toronto tied the game at 1-1 with 6:29 left in the first period, when Bates Battaglia scored his seventh goal of the season.

Raycroft had a forgettable night in goal for Toronto, yielding all six goals on just 21 shots.