Toronto Maple Leafs Phil Kessel (3rd L) and Tyler Bozak (4th L) try to get a shot past Los Angeles Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick during the first period of their NHL hockey game in Los Angeles, California, January 10, 2011.
LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERSSAN JOSE, CALIF.?Phil Kessel, named to the NHL all-star game for the first time in his career, was asked to sum up the first half of his season.
?It?s been hot and cold,? said Kessel. ?It?s not terrible. I?ve been scoring lately.?
It?s a sentiment that might sum up the Maple Leafs? season so far too.
Lately, the Leafs have been hot. The offence, terrible at times, has come around nicely.
?I see little plays out there where guys are starting to come closer to the puck and make little plays,? said forward Clarke MacArthur. ?It?s a way easier game than being spread out all over the ice.
?When we get going forward with the puck, we?re a lot more dangerous out there.?
The Leafs went into Tuesday night?s game in San Jose on as good a roll as they?ve had all season.
It may well be that scoring is contagious.
There was no ?aha? moment that could help explain the five-game stretch between Jan. 1 in Ottawa and Monday night in Los Angeles in which the Leafs went 4-1-0 and outscored their opponents 22-13.
But there might have been tell-tale signs that the team was about to awaken from its offensive slumber.
In the six final games of 2010, the Leafs went 1-5-0 and were outscored 23-15, but top players had started to pick up the pace. Mikhail Grabovski got going on Dec. 6. Heading into Tuesday night?s game, he?d potted 17 points since then.
But perhaps more importantly, Kessel woke up too. Kessel, who?d twice gone seven games without scoring, is scoring in bunches these days. He had four in his last three games heading into San Jose, and was named to the all-star game with a team-leading 18 goals.
Kessel, who is reluctant to open up to the media about anything, was lured out of his hotel before Tuesday?s game to talk about his sudden burst of offence.
?We?re playing pretty good hockey now,? said Kessel, quick to deflect praise to the team. ?We?re doing the little things, going after pucks, playing really hard and getting results.
?We?re fighting, we?re battling.?
Kessel is on track for 36 goals, which would match his career high but still fall short of expectations. He?s supposed to be on an upward trajectory towards 40, 45, maybe 50, according to some prognosticators.
But, like so many of his teammates, he has underachieved for stretches this season. Yet he insists he doesn?t feel the pressure of expectations, choosing instead to believe in himself.
?It doesn?t (bother me),? Kessel said of the pressure. ?You just stick with what you know. Goals are going to come eventually, if you?re getting your chances. If you?re playing well out there, things will work themselves out.?
So it is gratifying to an extent that a team whose major shortcoming is offence, had not one, but two players named to all-star teams: Kessel to the NHL squad and his new linemate, Joey Crabb, to the AHL team. It?s doubtful Crabb will be allowed to play in the AHL game in Hershey, Pa., given how well he?s playing in the NHL.
It perhaps may not be a coincidence that Kessel and centre Tyler Bozak emerged from their offensive slumbers around the time Crabb got his chance. Crabb?s a physical player, able to dig pucks out of the corner, stand in front of the net and, apparently, do a reverse spinarama backhander to feed the puck through traffic to Kessel at the side of the net, as he did Monday in L.A. to set up Kessel?s fourth goal in three games.
?That?s not an easy play to make,? Kessel said.
But it?s more than one line that woke up and lifted the Leafs ? if only for one day ? to the lofty perch of a tie for 11th overall in the East.
?We?ve been playing good hockey as a group the last 10 days,? said captain Dion Phaneuf. ?We weren?t getting results for a bit. We started to come together to play a full 200-foot game with every guy going.
?I think the reason why we?re having success right now and giving ourselves a chance is the consistency of our team and playing for a full 60 minutes.
?We lost a couple of tough one-goal games and those aren?t easy to handle, by any means. We played well in a lot of those games and we?re losing them. But we stuck with it.?
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