Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night, the Leafs’ second home defeat in a row and third in five games to start the 2018-19 season.
On his team’s inability to generate much offensively throughout the game in terms of shots, goals, and scoring chances:
I actually thought we skated real good at the start, but I thought St. Louis came in here to play hard. They were on the inside. They backchecked. They worked hard. We stayed on the outside, never got the puck to the net, and never got inside. In the end, they worked harder than we did. They competed harder on the puck in the hard areas and we turned the puck over and weren’t good enough.
I thought we had a bit of that the other night, and then… obviously, we are figuring out — we scored early, we scored easy, it was pretty loose, and everything was great — that it’s the NHL and it’s hard to score. Teams compete hard on you. Teams adjust and are going to play you hard.
We’ve got to get our mojo back by going to work. We’ll do that. We will go to work tomorrow, take an off-day Monday, and have another work day before we go to Winnipeg. Not good enough.
On what other teams are doing to adjust to the Leafs after their great start:
[There are] two parts to that. I don’t think we have been as good. I just talked about being above the puck. Numbers at the line. People inside. Working hard and competing hard. But that’s the NHL. You can’t expect it to be like it was. I don’t think anybody is actually thinking that.
We got off to a good start, and then we haven’t been as good as we need to be to be successful. Let’s get it turned around and get feeling good about ourselves.
On switching up the lines late and whether he’ll go with a new look for Wednesday in Winnipeg:
The good thing about it is I don’t have to decide that right now. By the time I am done watching the game tape prior to practice, I’ll have a good handle on that.
You can put everything back or you can change it all. We’ll see. We’ll look at it carefully without emotion and then make that decision.
