GIF: Morgan Rielly beats Lightning’s Vasilevskiy with clinical wrist shot

Photo Credit: Tom Szczerbowski/USA TODAY Sports

Even in the midst of a thoroughly depressing Toronto Maple Leafs season, a sublime talent like Morgan Rielly can score a goal lovely enough to make even the most hardened, cynical Leafs fan smile.

Early in the third period of Tuesday night’s Maple Leafs game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Rielly took a-cross seam pass from Nazem Kadri, out-waited Andrey Vasilevskiy with the patience of Job, and beat the young Russian-born netminder with a perfectly placed wrist shot.

Click past the jump to see the highlight.

Here’s the lovely play:

(Courtesy: TSN)

On a day in which a veteran Canadian sports writer described the Maple Leafs as the “least likable group of athletes I’ve been around” and no one disagreed, it was rather kind of Rielly, 21, to remind Leafs Nation that watching NHL hockey can indeed be fun sometimes.