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Forward Phil Kessel bristled when someone suggested the final few games of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ lost season lacked meaning.

“They mean stuff — they mean stuff to us,” he said Thursday morning, replying to the offending questioner in a polite but stern tone. “Everybody’s fighting for jobs. And we’re all competitive. We all want to play the best we can and win games.”

A few hours later, in one of only a dozen games left on the Leafs’ regular-season schedule, Kessel scored once in regulation and again in the shootout to help Toronto to its fifth win in six games, 2-1 over the New Jersey Devils.

Nikolai Kulemin and John Mitchell also scored shootout goals for the Leafs, while Jean-Sebastien Giguere made 24 saves in regulation and overtime.

Yann Danis made 24 saves for the Devils in place of Martin Brodeur, who was given the night off.

Danis made his second start of the month for the Devils, who rolled into Toronto the day after a hard-fought 5-2 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Brodeur contributed 24 saves to the cause Wednesday night, helping New Jersey keep pace with the defending Stanley Cup champions in the Atlantic Division.

It was a rare night’s work for Danis, who also happened to be in goal the night Giguere made his Leafs debut on Feb. 2, a 3-0 Toronto win. Brodeur, not surprisingly, is undefeated against the Leafs this season.

Danis surrendered the first goal of the game when he let a rebound from a Dion Phaneuf shot to carom directly to Kessel with time winding down in the first period. Kessel place it in a wide-open net for a 1-0 Toronto lead.

“We want to win every game we play,” Kessel said earlier in the day. “They mean stuff to the other teams, too. Teams are fighting for playoff spots, so we’re not going out there and saying, ‘these games don’t mean anything.’ “

Kessel buzzed around the ice with linemates Tyler Bozak and Nikolai Kulemin, though neither sidekick was on the ice for his goal. It was Kessel’s 27th of the season, leaving him nine adrift of the career-best 36 he scored with the Boston Bruins last year.

Defenceman Tomas Kaberle nearly gave the Leafs a 2-0 lead late in the second period, firing a shot off the post behind Danis. Kaberle led both teams with four shots through the first two periods, double the number managed by New Jersey’s Ilya Kovalchuk.

The momentum shifted a few minutes later when Devils winger Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond outsmarted a pair of Leafs along the boards and slid a pass to David Clarkson near the slot.

Clarkson beat Giguere to tie the game, but the Leafs continued to press. They hit another post seven minutes into the third period during a power-play with Devils defenceman Paul Martin in the box for hooking.

Nik Antropov and Colby Armstrong scored two goals apiece as the Atlanta Thrashers gave themselves hope in the playoff race with a second straight victory, 6-3 over the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night.

The Thrashers, three points out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, squandered a pair of two-goal leads for the second game in a row but still managed another vital win.

Antropov scored off a pair of deflections in front of the net, including a tiebreaking power-play goal with 16:04 remaining in the third period.

Armstrong added two goals less than five minutes apart to place it away for the Thrashers, who had lost six in a row before beating a pair of teams that appear headed for the playoffs, Buffalo and Ottawa.

The Senators are struggling, though. They have lost seven of eight games since the Olympic break, including the last four.

Atlanta reclaimed the lead after Andy Sutton, who had a rough night, delivered a cheap shot to Eric Boulton near centre ice and was sent off for elbowing. With a man advantage, Tobias Enstrom fired a slapshot that Antropov deflected past Brian Elliott for his 21st goal of the season.

Armstrong clinched it for the Thrashers. First, he stole an attempted clearing pass by Chris Phillips and ripped a shot over Elliott’s left shoulder for an unassisted goal with 14:26 left. Then, after Armstrong had a shot blocked in front, he scrambled in front of the net, took a return pass from Jim Slater and flipped it past Elliott with 9:40 left.

Atlanta scored on its first three shots on goal in the third period.

The Thrashers had leads of 2-0 and 3-1 before the Senators tied it with two goals just 43 seconds apart late in the second period.

Goalie livid

Atlanta goalie Johan Hedberg was livid about the first one, believing he was interfered with by Jarkko Ruutu after stopping the initial shot by Chris Campoli. The puck slid wide of the post and Ruutu got a piece of Hedberg at the top of the crease going after the loose puck.

Hedberg fell over and couldn’t get back in time as Ruutu scooped up the puck from behind the goal-line, then tucked it just inside the post for his 11th goal. The goalie complained bitterly and had to restrained by a linesman as he attempted to get at referee Stephane Auger.

Still seething about that call, Hedberg got even angrier when Phillips picked off an errant clearing pass and fired a screened shot past the goalie for the tying goal less than a minute later. Not long after, Hedberg made a save and shoved as a Senators player just for getting near the net.

But Hedberg came up huge most of the night. Among the 36 shots he stopped was a brilliant pad save on Jason Spezza, who cut in alone on the net midway through the third.

Just 2½ minutes into the game, Sutton let a long clearing pass slip between his legs as he backed up near the Ottawa blue line. Evgeny Artyukhin scooped it up, sped in all alone on Elliott and slid in a backhander.

Jim Slater scored for the second game in a row to make it 2-0 early in the second. After Chris Kelly’s goal for the Senators halved the lead, the Thrashers stretched it back out to a two-goal advantage on Antropov’s first of the night.

Elliott made a hard stop on Maxim Afinogenov at the side of the net, but the Thrashers winger grabbed the rebound and passed off quickly to Pavel Kubina at the top of the circle. He blasted a shot that was deflected in by Antropov before the scrambling goalie could get back in position.

This photo released by Galapagos National Park shows the grounded yacht in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, on Thursday. Sixteen Canadian tourists and eight Ecuadorian crew members were rescued from the vessel. No injuries were reported. (Galapagos National Park/Associated Press)

A Toronto couple and their relatives were among 16 Canadians and eight Ecuadorian crew members rescued from a yacht that ran aground Wednesday evening in the Galapagos Islands.

Three generations of a Toronto family, ranging in age from less than 10 to 70, were aboard the yacht when it hit a reef near a remote island.

Navy and national park vessels conducted a “safe and orderly” rescue, and there were no injuries, said the yacht’s operator, Quasar Expeditions.

All of the people aboard the yacht were taken to the nearby island of Santa Cruz where Quasar was transferring them to other boats to end their tour of the archipelago, said the tour operator’s local marketing manager, Fernando Diez.

He said the cause of the mishap was not yet clear but that the accident might have been the fault of the yacht’s captain.

Diez said none of the 3,500 gallons of fuel aboard the yacht had spilled and that an attempt would be made Thursday afternoon to free the vessel from choppy waters adjacent to the small island of Camano.

“We are completely aware that we need to be ready to combat any type of contamination there might be, although at the moment, there has been none,” Diez told The Associated Press.

A spokeswoman for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department, Dana Cryderman, confirmed that all Canadians who were aboard are safe and said the Canadian embassy in Ecuador was providing help.

Several members of the group lost their passports and will not be able to leave the country. They have been told to travel to Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, next Monday where they can be issued new passports.

The Galapagos Islands were made well-known by the 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin who documented their unique flora and fauna and fragile ecosystem.

Each passenger aboard the eight-cabin yacht paid $3,750 for the eight-day trip.

With files from the Associated Press