Knee Jerk Reaction: Thompson outduels Murray as Capitals take down Leafs

Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena featured a matchup between two of the Eastern Conference’s top teams, with Logan Thompson backstopping the Washington Capitals to a 5-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Through the early part of the season, the Leafs had the better goaltender on most nights. The play of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll has been a huge part of their success and a big reason they find themselves in contention to win the Atlantic Division near the midway point of the season.

To their credit, the Leafs came out of the gates strong in the second half of a back-to-back, taking a 1-0 lead just over three minutes into the game, but the Capitals’ netminder didn’t give them much beyond that. With the Capitals leading 2-1 in the second period after a couple of goals that Matt Murray would probably like another shot at, William Nylander corralled a bouncing puck in front, only for Thompson to get his glove out and snatch the tying goal from a gaping cage – a legitimate save of the year candidate.

The Leafs didn’t play particularly poorly, and neither did Murray, even if it wasn’t his best night between the pipes. Toronto generated plenty of chances, but the mistakes they made over the course of the game usually ended up in the back of their net, while Thompson made a number of difficult stops at the other end of the ice.

No, this loss shouldn’t fall squarely on the shoulders of Matt Murray, but the guy at the other end of the ice was better, and the absence of high-end goaltending becomes magnified when the Leafs struggle to find the back of the net as they did against Washington on Saturday. That high-end goaltending that they’ve gotten for most of the season has become a key part of their formula, but it is becoming apparent that it might be tough to sustain such a formula, especially given the durability concerns with both Stolarz and Woll.

December has been a difficult month for the Leafs, and they’ll surely be searching for more balance in their game as they hope to rely less on the heroics of their netminders when the calendar flips to 2025. It seems like most of Toronto’s wins this year have come from stellar goaltending and a couple of goals from the big guns, but they need