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Saturday, Jan. 15 7:00pm ET
Flames' lesser lights torch Leafs | |||||
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CALGARY, Alberta (AP) -- Two days after being passed over for the All-Star game, Calgary goalie Fred Brathwaite showed why he was such a strong candidate.
"It's fun to play behind these guys right now," Brathwaite said. "The effort again was 110 percent from everybody. For us, we're not used to having a 4-0 lead but, to our credit, the guys still played like it was 1-0." Since taking over the number one role from Grant Fuhr, Brathwaite is 14-10-3 and is near or at the top of the league in most statistical categories. "I don't think we gave him a lot of real tough chances, but he cut the angles down and didn't give us many second shots and made the stops look easy," said Wendel Clark, playing in his second game since signing with Toronto on Friday. "When a goalie is playing well, he makes stops look easy, so give him credit." Looking nothing like a matchup between the lowest scoring team in the Western Conference and the second-highest in the East, Calgary scored twice in the first period than twice more early in the second to establish a 4-0 lead. After Valeri Bure's 21st goal, 5:27 into the first, gave Calgary a 1-0 lead, Dollas scored his first goal of the season at 15:32. Dollas took a pass from Bure and, from the top of the faceoff circle, rifled a slap shot just inside the goalpost. "Personally, this is one of the hardest working teams I've ever played on," said Dollas, now with his seventh NHL club. "If you're going to beat us, it's going to be through hard work and I don't think there's any team that works harder than us. "We have one or two good hockey players and the rest of us get the lunch pails out." Jason Wiemer with his fourth goal and Rene Corbet with his second also scored for the Flames, who have won three in a row and are 11-1-1 in their last 13 at home. Before a Canadian Airlines Saddledome crowd of 17,145, Calgary's second sellout of the season, the Flames also moved above the .500 mark for the first time this far into a season since the lockout-shortened 1994-95 campaign. "They're playing excellent hockey right now," Clark said. "Freddie's playing excellent in net and they're getting opportunistic goals and that's the way you win hockey games." The win moves Calgary one point ahead of the Edmonton Oilers in the Northwest Division. It is also the Flames' first victory in 10 games against Toronto after losing nine straight dating to Feb. 17, 1997. Toronto, which won Friday night in Edmonton, was outshot 33-25. "Every team in this league has to play back-to-back games so that's no excuse to come back with a poor effort," Maple Leafs left-wing Mike Johnson said. "They just played harder than we did winning the battles in all the important areas." Wiemer's goal at 6:14 of the second, that made it 3-0, was the best of the night. On a 2-on-1 break, Martin St. Louis fed a perfect cross-ice pass to an outstretched Wiemer who fired the puck high over Healy.
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Calgary 4
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