Kampf ‘beauty’ sparks Maple Leafs, spurs methodical win over Predators

TORONTO — Through 34 minutes on this night, the Scotiabank Arena faithful found themselves desperate for something to hold onto. Their Toronto Maple Leafs felt much the same.

With nearly two periods in the bag, the home side and the visiting Nashville Predators had all but lulled the crowd to sleep. A messy opening frame had seen the Maple Leafs hemmed in their own zone repeatedly, their passes picked off or fluttering over teammates’ sticks into open ice. The Preds hadn’t fared much better, testing Ilya Samsonov little in the netminder’s first start in two weeks.

As the clock wound down into the final minutes of the second period, the tilt felt stuck in neutral, each occasional chance a momentary rev of the engine, with little movement to show for it.

And then Conor Timmins grabbed the puck, spied a streaking David Kampf, and whipped an inch-perfect dish through the heart of the neutral zone to the centreman’s tape.

Kampf lunged forward, split two defenders at the Preds’ blue line and pushed towards the cage. And with veteran Ryan McDonagh draped all over him, with only a breath’s worth of space between him and Nashville goalie Kevin Lankinen, No. 64 corralled the puck on his backhand, slipped it to his forehand, and roofed it, against the grain, over Lankinen’s left shoulder.

And the crowd erupted.

“Sick goal,” William Nylander said of the tally once the final buzzer had sounded.

“A beauty,” Morgan Rielly added.

“It was just a beautiful goal, everything that went into it,” echoed Auston Matthews. “I just thought his line did an unbelievable job for us tonight. Really wore down their defence, had a lot of really good o-zone shifts. Just a really, really solid game by that line, and obviously getting rewarded with just a beautiful goal, too.”

Beyond the glimpse of Kampf’s deceptively potent skill-set flashed on the goal, it was the crucial timing of the game-opener, the weight of it amid what the night was becoming, that had his teammates smiling in the locker room post-game.

“Just a tremendous goal. The effort and speed. … He pulls away there, and what a finish,” his coach, Sheldon Keefe, said from the bowels of the arena after what wound up a decisive Maple Leafs win. “That goal, obviously, is a huge one for us. You’re just waiting for that moment. You’re being patient, you keep working, but you need to get rewarded. 

“For Kampfer to come through like that, it was big.”

With the deadlock broken, the home side’s big dogs took over, Matthews and Nylander linking up on two beauties of their own to push the 1-0 lead to 3-0 over the next period’s worth of play, before Noah Gregor added a short-handed empty-netter for good measure.

The shutout victory gives Toronto four wins in their past five outings, and their second straight in regulation after a string of extra-time affairs. Getting this one just came down to chipping away, slowly and steadily, to eventually carve out the ‘W.’

“I think [it was] just staying on the attack, honestly,” Matthews said of the mentality that drove his squad to pull away over the latter half of the night. “Finding a good in-between with pucks that we could use to take and transition, go the other way and try to attack on offence — but also when the play wasn’t there, taking care of it, taking it back, having guys continue to press up the ice, not just sit back and let the play come to us. 

“I thought it was a really consistent game, all in all. And I thought the third period was one of our best this year.”

His coach echoed that sentiment, and pointed to the performance of his leading duo and their growing chemistry as key to the night’s win.

“I think it’s coming for sure,” Keefe said of that chemistry between Matthews and Nylander since uniting on the top line. “Auston, I thought he had some really good moments in the Ottawa game as well, so that really is three real good games for him. Obviously when he’s driving like that, no matter who he’s playing with, it’s going to go well. And Willy, it seems like a night like tonight is him coming back to life offensively. And probably more importantly, for me, just the way he was working off the puck tonight. He really contributed on the forecheck. 

“When that’s happening, we’re defending way less, and we have the puck way more. And that’s only going to benefit our elite players.”

Getting the ball rolling before it eventually spun into that dominant effort, though, was the club’s quiet hero of the night, Kampf, who stepped up and broke through when this one was still stuck in the mud.

Pausing just outside the Maple Leafs’ locker room post-game, finally entering only after being encouraged to step into the spotlight by Matthews — rather than continue on his usual path of putting his head down and getting back to work — Kampf couldn’t help but take that spotlight and redirect it at his teammates.

“It was a nice pass by Timmer,” he said of his goal. “I tried to get good speed and get behind their D-man, and tried to put it in the net. It went in, so I was happy.”

As for his takeaway on the night, as his Leafs prepare to head out on the road for a tour through the Metro, Kampf again opted to focus on the bigger picture.

“I felt like we played finally 60 minutes, a full game, every line rolling,” he said of the 4-0 rout. “It was a good game for us. So, hopefully we can keep it going like that.”