Leafs bag Thrashers in overtime

Toronto — Curtis Joseph became the fourth NHL goalie to win 450 career games, but the goalie at the other end of the ice Tuesday night somehow managed to earn a point for the Thrashers.

Johan Hedberg matched the Thrashers’ season high with 43 saves in the Maple Leafs’ 4-3 overtime victory.

“He made some unbelievable saves,” Toronto coach Ron Wilson said of Hedberg. “It shouldn’t have gone to overtime, but it did. The save Hedberg made on [Niklas] Hagman was as good a save as I’ve seen this year.”

That was only one storyline on a night filled with them.

Bryan Little kept scoring, with his seventh goal in four games. Ilya Kovalchuk kept not scoring, his goal-less streak reaching a career-high nine games. Thrashers coach John Anderson suggested Kovalchuk might be on a new line tonight against Carolina.

And a Thrashers team bedeviled with bad bounces got a different kind of bad break, a controversial penalty with less than nine seconds left in regulation.

Pavel Kubina’s slap shot 33 seconds into overtime came with Tobias Enstrom in the penalty box for interference, and neither Enstrom nor Anderson was happy about it. Enstrom shared his opinion with referee Bill McCreary on the ice after the whistle.

“I didn’t say anything special,” said Enstrom, who admitted the call surprised him. “I think it’s a weak call, but he made it and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Anderson, asked if he was disappointed by the call, said, “Disappointment wouldn’t be the real word for it. I don’t know what a penalty is anymore. We shoot ourselves in the foot enough. We don’t need anyone’s help.”

Little is getting the right kind of help from linemates Slava Kozlov and Todd White, and he’s making the most of every chance. Tuesday night, White passed to him from the side of the net, and Little converted with a shot from the slot.

He might be the hottest player in the entire NHL, and his 19 goals this season rank him in the middle of the league’s top 10 goal-scorers. If hockey were a one-man game, the Thrashers wouldn’t be last in the Southeast Division.

But while their sophomore sensation continues to put the puck in the net, the Thrashers’ leading scorer in franchise history continues to put the puck everywhere else. Kovalchuk took 14 shots, but only three of them wound up on net.

Joseph stopped all three en route to 29 saves overall.

But one of Kovalchuk’s shots that didn’t reach the net was a key to the Thrashers salvaging a point. After Jonas Frogren sprawled on the ice to block a shot from Kovalchuk, Colby Armstrong followed with a shot past Joseph to tie the game with 6:43 left.

Still, Anderson knows the Thrashers can’t be successful if Kovalchuk gets only assists.

“I’ve got to seriously look at changing some lines,” Anderson said. “We do need his scoring. … If we have to change some things, we’ll change some things.”

After consecutive losses, the Thrashers still managed to get a point, despite giving up 46 shots on net. The reason: Hedberg.

“He made some saves out of his rear end, pretty much,” Anderson said.