Maple Leafs’ Game 3 performance proves Dubas has assembled a superb team

Article content

TAMPA — The notion of firing Kyle Dubas as general manager of the Maple Leafs if they don’t defeat the Stanley Cup champions in the opening round of the playoffs is part of what life is like sometimes in hockey crazy Toronto.

Article content

Never mind the logic of it — no matter how this series ends. Logic and Leafs Nation haven’t always belonged in the very same sentence.

The idea though — that someone would have to pay for not eliminating the Tampa Bay Lightning in a best-of-seven series — and that someone being one of team president Brendan Shanahan, GM Dubas, or head coach Sheldon Keefe — is getting to the point of being rather ridiculous.

Article content

And it seemed even more ridiculous after Game 3 here at the Amalie Arena, where the Maple Leafs took a 2-1 lead in the series with a hard-fought, very tight, and occasionally impossible to explain 5-2 victory over the Lightning. The truth is, no matter how this series ends, this is a terrific Leafs team. This is the most complete Leafs team post-1967. This is a team worthy of applause.

Article content

And if you’re Dubas, the hand-picked choice of president Shanahan, Friday night was a reason to be more than pleased with your team but pleased, quietly, with your own work. Dubas isn’t the look-at-me kind of general manager. He may have had that I’m-smarter-than-you attitude in his early years with the Leafs but the embarrassing playoff defeats the past two seasons have humbled him somewhat.

Dubas made the deal for Jack Campbell when Frederik Andersen was still the No. 1 goalie with the Leafs. Campbell was again a giant Friday night: If he doesn’t make the deal for Campbell, giving up the impressive Trevor Moore in the trade with Los Angeles, where would the Leafs be in their most important position?

This was a night for the Leafs, a night for Dubas, a night for coach Keefe. A night for Jack Campbell.

Article content

Toronto went up 2-0 in the first period, just 6:35 into the game, in a noisy and hyperactive Amalie Arena, on an unlikely 3-on-1 goal. Ilya Lyubuskin, the defenseman Dubas traded for in getting rid of the semi-unimpressive Nick Ritchie, wound up leaving the penalty box and on the rush. Lyubuskin, not known for his him skills with the puck, waited just the right amount of time and found fourth liner Colin Blackwell in the slot, for the second goal.

Blackwell was the secondary piece of the Mark Giordano trade made by Dubas just before the NHL deadline. Blackwell was supposed to fit in somewhere—but neither Dubas nor Keefe—knew exactly where. Scoring goals was not expected. Not from an assist from a defenseman the Leafs acquired without any real notice at all.

Article content

This is what good general managers do. They find part. They find pieces. Drafting Auston Matthews, that was easy. Anyone could have done that. Signing Michael Bunting, the top scoring rookie in the NHL: There’s a certain skill in that.
A skill for the GM. A skill for the coach. They may not always be on the same page — no GM and coach ever are — but Keefe has taken the parts given to him and for the most part made something of them.

The Leafs went ahead 3-0 early in the second period in a game that didn’t seem like a 3-0 game on a goal by David Kampf, his second of the series. For a guy who isn’t supposed to score goals. He was a free agent signing by Dubas last summer. Like Blackwell, like Lyubushkin, Kampf was a player no one in Leafland was doing cartwheels over.

Article content

He wound up using his length and speed to break in on what looked like a 2-on-1 on the great Andrei Vasilevskiy and for the second time in three games his wrist shot beat the all-world goalie. His breakaway from him in Game 1 beat Vasilevskiy high. His semi-breakaway from him in Game 3 beat Vasilevskiy to the stick side.

This is the David Kampf who scored one NHL goal last season in Chicago. The guy who couldn’t score — but on the day he signed with the Leafs an NHL coach texted me to say the Leafs made the signing of the day. Why, I asked? Because he can do so many things defensively and Leafs are going to rely on him. And so they have.

More defensively than offensively. Then this series began. Matthews may have been snakebit on opportunities Friday night but Kampf cashed in the one that mattered most.

Article content

And coach Keefe, who switched up his lineup, not dressing Wayne Simmonds and Kyle Clifford, and adding Jason Spezza to the lineup, worked in his favor. As did his in-game shuffling of him. Keefe removed Bunting from the first line in the second half of the third period, and moved Alex Kerfoot to the first line. He then went back to his favorite third line — Kampf centering Ilya Mikheyev and Pierre Engvall — all Dubas acquisitions or draft picks.

Engvall passed to the hugely improved Mikheyev for his second empty net goal. The Leafs lead the series 2-1. All the talk of firing anybody can be put on hold.

For now.