Mike Babcock addressed the media after the Maple Leafs’ 4-1 loss to the Arizona Coyotes on Monday night that snapped the team’s six-game winning streak.
Babcock after his apology for his retort to the media earlier in the day about line combinations:
That’s not the way to treat anybody. Disrespectful. I saw it later and it was disrespectful.
On the goaltender interference call that pulled back the Auston Matthews tying goal:
We’ve had two of them the same way. The goal was going in, whether he touched him or not, because he had time and pushed out. But the league decides that, not us. In my opinion, that didn’t affect the outcome of the game. The one-on-one battles affected the outcome of the game. The “ready to compete” at the start affected the outcome of the game.
On the Coyotes catching the Leafs by surprise:
They were better than us; the first 10 minutes, they were better. We got the game coming, but when you don’t start on time and you’re not prepared to go right, you don’t deserve good results. We got what we deserved. I don’t know how long ago [it was] that New Jersey came in here and we talked about how it was a trap game. I made sure I didn’t talk about that this time because that didn’t work. So my approach this time didn’t work either.
But this was what I was concerned about today. It’s one thing when the other team, because of their record, makes you respect them. When your record is like what their record is… even though we tried to tell the players how good they’ve been playing lately and how they’ve come from behind all of that, we weren’t prepared. We got what we deserved. That’s just it. Congratulations to them. They were better than us.
On whether it’s human nature to to under-estimate opponents sometimes:
You get ready to play for the game today. That’s what a good pro does. That’s what you do. Each and every day. A lot of the guys that are driving us — the young skilled guys — weren’t here today.
Not today. We weren’t good enough with those guys today. There wasn’t enough of us.
