David Kampf scored the winner and Jack Campbell made 32 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 on Friday night to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series.
Morgan Rielly, Colin Blackwell and Ilya Mikheyev, twice into the empty net, had the other goals for Toronto, which wrestled back home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven series after the Lightning won Game 2. Pierre Engvall had three assists.
Ondrej Palat, with a goal and an assist and Ross Colton replied for Tampa. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 31 shots for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions.
Game 6, if necessary, would be back in Tampa on Thursday.
The Leafs are now 13-0-0 when Kampf scores in 2021-22, including twice in the playoffs after he buried another short-handed in Game 1.
WATCH | Kampf snipes eventual game winner as Leafs down Bolts in Game 3:
After the teams combined for a parade to the penalty box and 22 power plays through the first two contests, Toronto connected on an early man advantage when Tampa winger Pat Maroon was whistled for delay of game.
After a couple of good looks, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner both had shots blocked in quick succession, but the puck found its way to Rielly off Michael Bunting's skate for him to fire past Vasilevskiy at 4:54, who came up with a bounce-back performance in Game 2 after giving up five goals on 33 shots in the opener.
The Leafs then killed off a Lightning power play thanks to some big stops from Campbell and then raced the other way on a 3-on-1 break after the penalty expired, with Ilya Lyubushkin — who came out of the box — delaying before feeding Blackwell to bury it into a wide-open net at 9:44 for the first playoff goal of his career.
Fans in Tampa, much like
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