Toronto Maple Leafs: Jack Campbell Outplays Best Goalie in the World

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lighting in 2-1 in overtime on a William Nylander goal, after John Tavares tied it with under a minute left.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning each entered the game having won three in a row, and it was an interesting game, to say the least.

The Leafs ultimately won, but it was a game that could have gone either way. Tampa came out flying, then the Leafs were utterly dominant for close to a 20 minutes stretch, until Tampa came alive and seemed to surprise them late in the game.

Jack Campbell stopped several high danger shots, including a couple of breakaways to preserve the game for the Leafs.  He was easily the game’s MVP, and it was perhaps his best game of his NHL career, coming, as it did, against the league’s top team and best goalie.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Jack Campbell

You hear a lot of people complaining about the job GM Kyle Dubas has done, but his trade for Jack Campbell is turning into one of the best trades in Toronto Maple Leafs history, as well as recent NHL history.

Campbell had a Vezina-worthy start to his Leafs career last season, but questions remained.  I don’t know that he’s going to keep up his absolutely insane level of play, but the question of “is Jack Campbell a quality NHL starting goalie” has been answered to satisfaction: he is.

The next question is, is Campbell a legitimate top goalie and NHL superstar?  With such a volatile position, who’s to say?  Campbell has been perhaps the NHL’s best goalie for about a year now, and that can’t be ignored.

Last night he did something Leafs goalies have been rarely able to do: he stole a game.  The Leafs played a good game against a top team and it could have gone either way until the third period, when Campbell just absolutely stood on his head.

So far the Leafs have lost games this year because of goaltending (not Campbell) and because their shooters couldn’t score. This was, however, the first time they won a game they deserved to lose because of their goalie.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

I thought this was also a particularly inspired game by the Toronto Maple Leafs fourth line, especially Nick Ritchie who has had a rough start to his Leafs career and I thought played his best game so far.

With the two points the Toronto Maple Leafs move into second place in the Atlantic, behind of course the 9-0-1 Florida Panthers.