Nylander gives Maple Leafs OT win against Lightning

TORONTO -- William Nylander scored a power-play goal at 2:43 of overtime to give the Toronto Maple Leafs a 2-1 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday.

Nylander one-timed a pass from Auston Matthews from above the left face-off dot for his team-leading fifth goal of the season.
"Auston gave me a great pass right in my wheelhouse so I just wanted to rip it and hope it went in," Nylander said. "It's huge. To start the way we started, and then come back and battle against a great team like Tampa, it helps boost the confidence and shows the way we need to play."
Matthews and Mitchell Marner each had two assists, and Jack Campbell made 24 saves for the Maple Leafs (6-4-1), who have won four in a row.
John Tavares tied it 1-1 at 19:18 of the third period when he one-timed a pass from Marner from the slot over Andrei Vasilevskiy's blocker.
"Any time you are able to fight back, face adversity all night, not have the lead and be able to tie it late, play in extra time and find a way on the power play when we had an opportunity early in the game that we let slip, it's just a big character builder," Tavares said. "It's a good feeling knowing you found a way to get it done when you didn't have your best."

Tavares started the play when he knocked down Victor Hedman's clearing attempt just inside the blueline.
"We got careless with the puck, turned pucks over," Hedman said. "It's not the way we want to play. Our first period was phenomenal, I thought, but we have to do that for 60 minutes."
Pat Maroon scored, and Vasilevskiy made 32 saves for the Lightning (5-3-2), who had won three in a row.
"The frustrating part is I didn't feel like the Maple Leafs beat us, I feel like we just beat ourselves, and that was painfully evident after the first period," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "The second was just not the way we want to play the game and stuff caught up with us. When you turn the puck over like that, and we did that [on the Tavares tying goal], we just can't keep doing that.
"For two years we haven't been doing that and we've been making a habit of it at the start of this season. We felt like we gave a point away tonight."
Campbell stopped Brayden Point on a breakaway at 10:51 of the third period to keep the score 1-0.
"Oh, yeah," Campbell said. "Vasilevskiy makes it tough, and it's fun. He sets the bar and it's just fun to battle. But I believe in our boys and they came through."

The Lightning took a 1-0 lead at 13:16 of the first period when Maroon took a pass from Corey Perry on a 2-on-1 and shot from just below the left face-off dot. It was Maroon's first goal since March 27.
Tampa Bay killed off a two-minute 5-on-3 power play that began at 17:48 after Hedman took a minor penalty for hooking Marner before Mikhail Sergachev was called for a minor penalty for an illegal check to the head of Marner.
"He kind of came across and caught me up high a little bit," Marner said. "He apologized later in the second period there, but obviously it's something we really don't want happening in games, but it does happen still. Hopefully it gets out of the game, but it's a fast-paced game out there, stuff happens quickly."
Vasilevskiy made two saves in the second period on Wayne Simmonds: one at 9:16 when he stopped Simmonds alone in the slot after he took a pass from Nick Ritchie; the second at 19:28 on a breakaway with a right pad stretch.
"There's a lot of positives that come out of this, pulling two points out of it, the fact we found ourselves to push back in the second after, to me, our first period was, in terms of how the game flowed from shift to shift, I thought we just had nothing happening," Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said.
"I thought it was as poor a period we've played this season, so the fact we had to regroup ourselves and find another gear in our game, I liked that we did that. There's a lot of things we can take away from what we saw from the back-to-back champions tonight."
NOTES: Tavares (three goals, three assists) and Marner (two goals, five assists) each has a four-game point streak. … Perry's assist on Maroon's goal was his first point with the Lightning. He signed a two-year contract July 29. … Tampa Bay defenseman Jan Rutta played 15:46 after missing one game with an undisclosed injury.