In Toronto, Jack Campbell made 24 saves and the Maple Leafs blanked the Nashville Predators, 3-0, on Tuesday night.
The Leafs have won nine of their last `10 games and improved to 11-5-1.
“It feels great, especially with Nashville coming in having played extremely well right now,” Campbell said. “Our team played so great in front of me, the shot blocks at the end and the whole game really speaks for itself. I was really lucky to play behind the blue guys tonight, we were great.”
Auston Matthews scored all the offense Campbell would need when he hit for a goal in the first period for a 1-0 lead.
“It was definitely one of [our most complete games of the season],” Matthews said. “The third period especially, just locking it down playing with good structure and all four lines weren’t giving them much, and then to score a couple goals late to put the game away, I thought overall it was a really good game, but I thought that third period, we stepped up and shut the door.”
David Kampf scored with just under four minutes left in the third period for a 2-0 lead to Toronto.
“I don’t think it was our best game, I thought they outplayed us for some pretty long portions,” Nashville’s Mark Borowiecki said. “They tilted the ice on us in the second period a little bit for sure, you could see it. They have so much offensive talent and power, but to our credit I think we defended hard. We were competitive the whole game, we worked, it certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort.”
The loss snapped a three-game winning streak for the Predators.
“I can’t say enough good things about Jack, honestly,” Matthews said. “He’s been so good ever since he’s got here. I could go on and on, but just his attitude every day, he comes to the rink with a smile on his face and competes for us every night. That’s all you can really ask for from your goalie. We always have full confidence when he’s in the net because we know he’s going to work and compete for us, and he was unbelievable tonight.”
Mitchell Marner hot for an empty-net goal to ice the 3-0 win.
Juuse Saros made 31 saves in the Preds loss.
“That’s a good team, and I think we tried to make an effort to get back in the game, and unfortunately it was kind of a [lousy] goal, that second one,” Saros said.
“It was a good test for us and we will look at some video to see where we can be a little bit better. We’re not satisfied tonight. We kind of know what we are capable of.”
Nashville dropped to 9-6-1.
“I thought Saros played well, I liked our effort and our compete, but some of our puck execution was not at the level it needed to be at,” Predators coach John Hynes said. “We turned some pucks over, which gave them some momentum, and then some decisions in the offensive zone turning pucks over gave them some easy breakouts, so we’ve got to clean that up.”
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