Leafs Rally to Ruin Rangers' Home Opener

The Toronto Maple Leafs rallied for a 4-2 victory over the Rangers Thursday, taking advantage of two disallowed goals to ruin New York's chances of winning their home opener.

The Maple Leafs (6-2-1) withstood an early charge by the Rangers (3-3-2), who were the last team in the NHL to play at home after starting the season with two games in Europe and five on the road while Madison Square Garden underwent renovations.

Dan Giradri opened the scoring for the Rangers when he beat Maple Leafs goaltender Jonas Gustavsson through the legs with a slapshot, before Ryan Callahan then had two goals disallowed for contact that prevented Gustavsson from saving the shots.

We did a lot of good things. It was a good team effort, Leafs coach Ron Wilson said.

The one shot, that was a shot the Monster (Gustavsson) should've had, then he stopped some ones that he shouldn't have. I thought after that first goal, the Monster made some big saves for us and kept us going.

The Maple Leafs scored the only goal of the second period on a snap shot from a bad angle by Matthew Lombardi that beat Rangers' goalie Henrik Lundqvist.

Lundqvist redeemed himself stopping Phil Kessel on two breakaways in the middle period to keep the score even before the Maple Leafs took command of the game.

Joffrey Lupul muscled his way through a crowd to knock in a rebound early in the third period to give Toronto the lead, which Clarke MacArthur and Mike Brown extended before Michael Del Zotto scored a late goal for the Rangers.

I thought we had a pretty good first and had some sustained pressure, Callahan said.

In the second and third period, we just weren't doing that. It was definitely disappointing, especially with all the anticipation.

We wanted to start with a win in the new building. The crowd was great and definitely gave us a lift in the first period.