TORONTO — From captain to callups, Sheldon Keefe roasted his players at the postgame podium.
And he had every right to do so.
“We just overdid. It was just really immature. Really immature all the way through our game. I thought it was immature from our most experienced players and our leaders. And then our players who are immature, our inexperienced guys, I mean, we made lots of mistakes,” said the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, following an ugly 6-3 home loss to the desperate New Jersey Devils.
“Hated lots about our game tonight.”
This certainly wasn’t the first time Keefe’s Leafs blew multiple leads — in this case, 1-0 in the first and 3-2 in the second — nor let lackadaisical habits and a rash of puck mismanagement unravel them against a weaker opponent. Nor come up empty on the power-play.
But this was the first time this season that Keefe and the leaders who did speak swatted away all available excuses — all-stars Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly did not play due to injury; and Jersey’s Jake Allen supplied a stellar 42-save performance — and saw their effort for what it was: a mess.
Keefe didn’t let Joseph Woll off the hook. He called out his third and fourth lines for getting dashed in the second frame. He singled out Bobby McMann for giving up a 2-on-1 rush early. And he pointed a finger to his leaders up front, unprompted.
“They gotta be the example. John Tavares has been the example for us. He’s been outstanding for us for a long period of time. He himself got carried away tonight. That’s our captain,” Keefe said, pointedly.
“So, if that’s going to happen, well, the rest of our bench is now picking up as we go. When you do that, you open the door for an opposition to have a good night. And they did that. And I thought the last goal at the end of the third period there [a Jack Hughes breakaway, gifted by an intercepted Max Domi pass], that’s indicative of our second and third periods.”
Who knows what else the coach would’ve said had his post-loss Q&A not been ended by PR before the three-minute mark?
Thing is, with all the pregame chatter about dialling in their details for this stretch run, the Maple Leafs came out firing in the first, outshooting Jersey 25-10. Puck touches galore.
A hot start in the second saw both William Nylander and Auston Matthews bulge the net off the rush. And then?
“We got incredibly sloppy and careless, and that’s disappointing,” Keefe said.
Toronto committed 19 giveaways, feeding the very counterattack Keefe had warned his group about in the pre-scout. Fifteen Leafs finished in the minus column, and not one of their jumbled defence pairings (McCabe-Liljegren, Brodie-Lyubushkin, Benoit-Timmins) looked like a good idea come playoff time.
“I don’t think we were able to get too much going. And when we did, we just gave it right back. So, I think just a little bit of an immature performance by us at times. We have to have that killer instinct a little bit more, especially when you have a good first period like that,” Matthews said.
“That stuff just can’t happen. That’s on us, on the players.”
Nylander’s assessment was similarly refreshing.
“I think just sloppy, letting it get in a little free flowing and not playing hard enough,” Nylander said.
“It is rattling. We know we’re capable of a lot better in this locker room, so we still have some time to dial it up. I think we’ve been playing great as of late. So, we came in and played against a little bit of a looser team. Can’t happen again.”
Don’t look now, but after losing four of their past six, the Leafs sit just four points up on the fourth-place Lightning, whom they face twice in their final 11 games. And while falling to a wild-card spot is still unlikely, the team that didn’t show up Tuesday hardly looks like one sharpening its swords for the postseason.
“We haven’t clinched anything,” Keefe stressed. “Nothing’s secure at this point in time. And we need to approach it that way. Every day, every shift, every practice we get, we got to have a level of urgency to everything that we’re doing here.”
Fox’s Fast Five
• Nylander sniped a puck off the rush that beat Jake Allen clean short-side, giving the Swede back-to-back 40-goal campaigns.
“Obviously the win is a lot more important than the 40 goals,” he said.
• Injury roundup: Marner (ankle) has been upgraded to day-to-day status. Rielly missed Tuesday’s game due to a minor upper-body injury. Joel Edmundson (undisclosed) is doubtful to play this week. And Mark Giordano (concussion) is now medically cleared to come off long-term injured reserve.
• Luke Hughes jumped in the rush and beat Woll clean on the Devils’ first shot of the night. The D-man’s ninth goal and 40th point pulls him into a tie (with Minnesota’s Brock Faber) for second in rookie scoring, behind Connor Bedard.
“He’s like Quinn but a lot different in ways,” said Devils coach Travis Green, who worked with Luke’s older brother in Vancouver. “He’s just a very special talent, and he’s going to have a long career in the league, and the ceiling’s high.”
Luke, 20, is 6-foot-2 and 184 pounds. The Norris-hunting Quinn, 24, is a slight 5-foot-10, 180 pounds.
“He’s a bigger guy. He’s a different player. He skates a little different. His play with the puck is a bit different as well. He defends different than Quinn. But he’s humble, a lot like Quinn, which is always what you want to see out of young players. And he’s hungry to learn.”
• The Leafs have allowed 11 power-play goals in 11 games this month, watching their penalty kill tumble to 27th in the league.
Ilya Lyubushkin says their PK needs to be more aggressive, to force the opposition into rushing plays and making mistakes.
“We’re a little bit in-between,” Bobby McMann agrees. “When you aren’t having success, you second guess it a little bit. You’re a little bit in-between, thinking about it rather than reacting. I think we can just react and just play hockey and pressure their guys.”
Toronto went 2-for-2 on the kill Tuesday, a positive step.
• Trying to carry momentum from Sunday’s 41-save performance in Carolina, Woll made his first consecutive starts since returning from injury. Facing plenty of high-danger chances, the goaltender gave up five and finished with a career-worst .792 save percentage on this night.
“You can’t let in the first shot of the game,” Keefe said. “That’s two in a row now.”
