Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning stops a shot from John Tavares of the Toronto Maple Leafs at Amalie Arena on May 8, 2022.Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Lousy defence. Poor goaltending. Too many penalties. The Maple Leafs did it all on Sunday night in an ugly collapse against the Lightning.
Tampa Bay took charge after only 60 seconds and rolled to a 7-3 victory to pull even after four games of the first-round playoff series. With a win, Toronto had a chance to put the Stanley Cup defending champions in a stranglehold. Instead, it was a disaster through and through.
“It’s disappointing,” Jake Muzzin, the Maple Leafs defenceman, said. “We battled hard to be in the position we were in.
“They came out hot, we were on our heels and chasing the game, took too many penalties …”
Muzzin’s voice trailed off.
On the first shot of the contest, Steven Stamkos beat defenceman Justin Holl and blasted a one-timer past Maple Leafs goalie Jack Campbell. Toronto didn’t even register its second shot until nearly 12 minutes had past and by then the Lightning had already surged to a 3-0 lead.
Campbell was pulled from the net with 13:11 left in the second period. He allowed five goals on 16 shots – including one that went right through his glove – before Erik Kallgren was called upon in relief.
The Lightning's Ross Colton celebrates an empty-net goal in the third period.Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Head coach Sheldon Keefe talked it over with Campbell and then decided to remove him.
“I always want to battle but I respect the coach’s decision,” Campbell said.
Said Keefe: “It was a long way for us to come back. I wanted to make sure he’d be ready for the next game.”
Tampa Bay has now won 17 successive games following a postseason loss. In every one of those victories, the steely nerved Andrei Vasilevskiy was in the net.
He was superb again on Sunday. He stopped 22 shots and never gave the Maple Leafs the opportunity to have the slightest belief they could win.
The next game in the best-of-seven will take place on Tuesday at Scotiabank Arena, with Game 6 on Thursday back in Tampa. If a seventh game is necessary it will be on Saturday in Toronto.
With the triumph, Tampa Bay kept its hopes alive at becoming the first team to win three successive Stanley Cups since the New York Islanders in 1982.
The Maple Leafs have not won a playoffs series since 2004 and have been eliminated in the postseason’s opening round in each of the past six years. The team’s core group of players – Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly – have each been on the losing side a half-dozen times.
After Stamkos put Tampa Bay ahead one minute after the opening faceoff Pierre-Edouard Bellemare pounced on a rebound of a shot by Corey Perry for a 2-0 lead with 14:40 remaining in the first. Pat Maroon then added to the visitors’ misery by sliding a puck around Campbell with 12:02 still left before the first intermission.
At that point Tampa Bay had scored three times on six shots and the game was all but over.
The early part of the second was no better for the Maple Leafs – Ross Colton fired a shot through Campbell’s mitt within the first four minutes and Corey Perry netted another on a power play with 14:35 left.
By then, the sellout crowd was singing and taunting Campbell. One fan held up a hand-made sign that said “1967″ a reminder that Toronto has not won a Stanley Cup since then. Another’s placard said “It Takes 4 to win the War.”
The teams have now played eight times in the regular season and playoffs and each has won four. During the first round they have traded victories game by game. Every one of them has been one-sided.
The Lightning are 4-5 all-time in a playoff series when trailing 2-1. They last came back from 2-1 down in a 2015 Eastern Conference quarter-final against Detroit to win in seven games on their way to advancing to the Stanley Cup final.
“We have a recipe,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said Saturday. “We’ve been in these situations before. Is it a guarantee that we’re going to win Sunday? No. But I have a ton a faith in the veteran group here. I expect a bounce back.”
The Lightning got it.
“Our group doesn’t lack confidence,” Zach Bogosian, the Tampa Bay defenceman, said Sunday morning. “It hasn’t in a long time.”
Now each team has split two games on each other’s home ice. From here on what was a best-of-seven has become a best two of three.
William Nylander scored Toronto’s first goal with 17:33 remaining in the third. He added another with eight minutes to go. Too little, way too late.
Tampa’s Ondrej Palat scored on an empty net with five minutes to go, but Toronto’s Muzzin made the score 6-3 with a goal a minute later. Colton added another empty-netter with 2:16 left to make it 7-3.
“We expect them to play their absolute best game of the series now, and I expect us to do the same,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said earlier on Sunday. “I still think we haven’t played our best hockey yet and it will definitely be required.”
Despite a somewhat sloppy third period, Tampa Bay definitely played its best so far; the Maple Leafs barely had a pulse.
“We did not play at the required level,” Keefe said.
He was tight-lipped. And right.
Marty Klinkenberg