Good, Bad and Ugly - Leafs Vs Blues: January 15, 2021
This is a simple feature where I pick one good aspect, one bad one, and one ugly one from each game. Tonight's game was a wild one in St. Louis, so let's get started!
The Good - Mitch Marner
The Leafs' offence exploded tonight for 6 goals and Marner chipped in with a classic Mitch Marner goal - a quick transition after the Leafs forced a turnover just inside of the Blues' blueline and just a well placed shot. He also had a fantastic feed to Auston Matthews on the power play when the Leafs were down a goal in the third. It's timely plays like that that we need to see more of from Mitch. He was great out there tonight.
The Bad - Jack Campbell
I love Jack Campbell with all my heart, and he's earned the right to have an off night. Tonight he had one. Soup didn't get a ton of help from either his teammates or the officials tonight, but let's be real. If Jack is playing the way we've seen him play this year, he stops at least a couple of the pucks that managed to get by him. Am I worried by Campbell's performance? No. He's still the best goaltender in the league this season, if you ask me. Just a rough night, and nothing a plate of lobster linguine won't fix.
The Ugly - The game-winning goal
Note: I put the officials here last game so I can't, in good conscience, put them here again.. but, yeah, it was bad.
If Jack had an off night Binnington had a nightmare. And he will continue to have nightmares about that god awful last goal off the stick of Ilya Mikheyev from the tough angle. This isn't to take away from Mikheyev either, he's been great. It's simply to laugh at how bad a goal that was for Binnington to give up. I'm very disappointed we weren't treated to a stick smashing fit afterwards.
