In Edmonton, Jack Campbell made 30 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Oilers, 4-0, on Saturday evening.
“It was awesome,” Campbell said. “It’s what you play for, winning the game, and the boys played amazing tonight. It was just fun to be a part of it and get back in there into battle with them. I’m just proud of this group. That was a heck of a game, and we needed it.”
William Nylander got the party started with a power-play goal in the first period for a 1-0 lead to the Leafs.
“Everything really came up Leafs here tonight,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Our power play gets one, and we don’t take any penalties and we were able to do a good job and not give anything easy for their top guys. That was really good. And we scored a goal in each period too, and we got three goals from three different lines. We got great goaltending, our power play was perfect, and our penalty kill didn’t have to work today, so it’s a real good win for us today.”
Mitchell Marner scored in the latter stages of the first period for a 2-0 lead, and Jason Spezza pushed the advantage to 3-0 in in the middle frame.
“You need a full team effort against a player like [McDavid] and the type of offense they have,” the Maple Leafs’ John Tavares said. “We were real disciplined tonight, which was the key. We didn’t let them feel the puck [on the power play] tonight, let them feel good, getting rewarded and getting their game going.”
The Maple Leafs improved to 16-4-2.
Zach Hyman scored just past the midway point of the third period for the 4-0 final.
Edmonton dropped to 14-9-0.
“We weren’t sharp enough,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said. “They played a strong game, and we weren’t sharp enough to win. We got beat. You have to use this as a lesson, same as those games we were winning in different ways. We had a couple of chances early, but we weren’t sharp and didn’t capitalize on anything.”
Mike Smith made 25 save in the loss, his first this season.
“We just didn’t deserve to win this game,” the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl said. “It’s pretty obvious that they just outbattled us. We couldn’t really get to their net front. We got shots on net, but they weren’t very dangerous, or any second attempts.”
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