Goalie woes continue

With the NHL trade deadline fast approaching, the Toronto Maple Leafs still don’t have their answer in net as evidenced in last night’s OT loss.

Will the Toronto Maple Leafs’ No. 1 goalie please stand up?

Is it Jonas Gustavsson? Is it James Reimer? Based on Gustavsson’s numbers, compared to Reimer’s, you might give him a slight edge.

Based on Tuesday night’s 4-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils, though, you would say definitely not.

The problem is, after a game in which Gustavsson arguably cost his team a chance to gain two valuable points, Reimer doesn’t seem like a great alternative to face the San Jose Sharks at the ACC Thursday night. After that, the Leafs play two winnable games at home against Washington and Florida before heading to Chicago to face the Blackhawks next Wednesday.

I say winnable, assuming they get decent goaltending which might be a bit of a stretch.

Gustavsson had a game he’d rather forget, allowing three soft goals including one in overtime. Oh sure, he made two spectacular stops on a couple of guys named Kovalchuk and Parise early in the third period with his team trailing 3-2 that allowed the Leafs to stay in the game and eventually tie it up with 44 seconds remaining, but his gaff on the game-winning goal was a killer.

New Jersey defenceman Mark Fayne’s routine slapper from the right point was going wide of the net, but Gustavsson played the puck and somehow managed to direct it into the goal. Leafs coach Ron Wilson is having a tough time selecting his starter these days as neither goalie appears to want to take the ball and run with it, but went with The Monster because he was in goal Nov. 2 in New Jersey when the Leafs beat the Devils 5-3. Truthfully, it seemed like as good a reason as any to start Gustavsson over Reimer the way both have been playing of late.

You’d have to think Reimer, who has lost three of his last four games, will start against the Sharks. There was a time early in the year when Gustavsson was winning that the Leafs continued to make Reimer the No. 1 stopper. Those days are over. Wilson deflected the blame off his goaltender; or at least he spread it around a little bit.

"We’ve just got to do, I suppose, a better job of supporting our goaltenders," Wilson said. "Not disrespecting New Jersey, but we have a team like San Jose coming in and you can count on them getting 40-45 shots. They pump a lot of pucks at the net so we’ve got to figure out a way of helping our goalies out at practice in the next day or so."

Asked if he would simply continue to rotate his goaltenders, Wilson, who rarely seems befuddled, offered, "I don’t know. This is a hard place to play goal and we have to find a way to try to get them settled down. We have to find a way to get them confidence. They’ve got to get to the top of the crease and go from there."

Of course, there is another alternative. With the trade deadline quickly approaching, GM Brian Burke may decide to bring in a veteran goaltender depending on the price he’d have to pay. The danger in that is, if you give up a decent prospect or a roster player to get a vet and the new goalie doesn’t save the day, you wind up wishing you had stood pat. In case you haven’t noticed, teams aren’t exactly lining up to send goaltending help to Toronto -- or anywhere else, for that matter.

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It wasn’t a totally awful game for the Leafs who continue to cling to the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. At the same time Toronto was sending its fans home unhappy, the Winnipeg Jets, who are tied with the Leafs with 65 points, dropped a heartbreaking 5-4 decision to the Philadelphia Flyers at home in a game in which they allowed the Flyers to force overtime with 10 seconds remaining in regulation time and then gave up the GWG with 44 seconds left in OT.

Mikhail Grabovski continued his fine play and was Toronto’s best player on the night.

"Grabo and his linemates (Clarke MacArthur and Nikolai Kulemin) play their best when they are given a defensive assignment; not just defence, but they also score which is a great plus because they work so hard when they are challenged like that," Wilson said.

Most heartbreaking for the Leafs was the fact young defenceman Jake Gardiner had a chance to win it for his team in overtime when he laced a slap shot off the goal post. As fate would have it, the Devils took advantage of their good fortune by racing into Toronto’s zone and taking the extra point that was up for grabs.

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy will cover the Toronto Maple Leafs for sportsnet.ca for the 2011/12 season.