Shoalts: Shootout makes up for multitude of Leaf sins in win over Devils The Toronto Maple Leafs were saved by the shootout on Sunday, breaking a four-game losing streak despite being outplayed for most of the night. The New Jersey Devils were the better team at the Air Canada Centre, outshooting the Leafs 38-25 in regulation and overtime, not that outshooting the Leafs is a particularly daunting challenge. But the Devils were undone by their futility in the shootout. Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier stopped all three New Jersey shooters while James van Riemsdyk managed a goal for the Leafs to secure a 3-2 win, which left the Devils 0-7 in shootouts this NHL season. In a season full of dreadful games, the first 40 minutes of this one ranked with the worst despite the 2-2 score going into the third period. Maybe it was the rare Sunday night home game, but the most polite thing that could be said about the Maple Leafs was that they looked out of sorts. They started the game in a disorganized state, as if working on a Sunday was a foreign concept. By the 9:09 mark of the first period, the Devils had a 7-1 edge in shots and it looked like the best Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier could hope for was to get out of the game with his health intact. And then a funny thing happened, as it often did back some months ago when the Leafs were getting wildly outshot but still winning games. The first line of Tyler Bozak, Phil Kessel and van Riemsdyk had its first good shift more than 15 minutes into the proceedings, and they produced the game's first goal when Bozak knocked in a rebound. But any hope of a sustained wake-up call quickly dissipated. The pedestrian pace returned, although the visitors could take a share of the blame as well. The Devils are not financially able to afford much elite talent, so they specialize in slowing games down to suit their defensive style, and the Leafs were too happy to oblige. Toronto rookie Morgan Rielly got the second period off to an equally bad start when he took a holding penalty. Head coach Randy Carlyle persisted in playing youngsters Jake Gardiner and Rielly together on defence, and they looked overmatched at times, with the holding penalty just one consequence. Another was Adam Henrique's power-play goal at 1:39 that tied the score. However, the oddness of the game turned in the Leafs" favour when the referees called two consecutive high-sticking penalties on the Devils. By the end of the period, the Devils took two more high-sticking calls for a total of four. But the Leafs were only able to capitalize on the second one, at 5:56, when van Riemsdyk slapped in a rebound for his 17th goal of the season. Typically, the Leafs could only hang on to the lead for 27 seconds thanks to their defensive miscues. Cody Franson, for example, stands out among his Leafs peers for the sheer awfulness of his season. He gave a tremendous demonstration of this when he was caught up ice as the Devils took control of the puck near their own blue line. New Jersey defenceman Marek Zidlicky spotted winger Ryane Clowe all by himself at the Leafs blue line and, with Franson nowhere in sight, he fired a long, diagonal pass to give Clowe a breakaway. Now, if you held a debate about the worst free-agent signing this season, any number of Devils fans would argue the four-year deal and its $4.85-million (all currency U.S.) salary-cap hit given to Clowe is much worse than the seven years at $5.25-million per year the Leafs gave former Devil David Clarkson. After all, Clowe went into Sunday's game with zero goals in 14 games, on top of a concussion, while Clarkson, who missed 12 games due to suspensions, had a princely total of three goals in 33 games. But on the breakaway, Clowe looked just like Phil Kessel in deking Bernier to score his first goal of the season and tie the game 2-2. Clarkson? He got all of three minutes, 43 seconds of ice time in the second period because of all the Devils penalties. The Five-Million-Dollar Man doesn't play the power play, you see. To be fair, the Leafs should have gone into the third period with the lead, but they were the victims of a bad call by referee Ghislain Hebert. When Bozak knocked in a rebound on a powerplay midway through the second, Hebert emphatically waved it off, calling van Riemsdyk for encroaching on Devils goaltender Cory Schneider. The replays, however, showed van Reimsdyk made as little contact with Schneider as the rest of the Leafs did with the Devils all evening.