Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 5-3 loss to the Florida Panthers on Monday night, dropping the Leafs’ record to 28-18-7 on the season.
On Frederik Andersen’s status after leaving the game in the first intermission:
He is feeling better, from what I am told. We’re just going to have to give him the night and see how he is in the morning.
On whether Andersen went through concussion protocol:
He was. He went through that whole process, but my understanding is the results were positive on that. Given the nature of the injury and everything, they wanted to take caution and give it time, so that is what they will do. We will give him tonight and see how he is in the morning.
On whether Andersen is going to practice tomorrow:
We’ll have to see how he is in the morning, and if he gets on the ice and practices and all of that kind of stuff, but the practice is in doubt for tomorrow at this point.
On the team’s overall performance:
I thought we played a really good game. I think if we play that type of game 100 times, we probably win 99 of them or something in that neighbourhood. You don’t get the points and that hurts. Obviously, we get the 3-1 goal and it should be over from there. We lose our focus a little bit and then we let them get the second one, and then we just never really recovered. That was the challenge for us.
On whether this was a sign of the team’s immaturity again:
Yes and no. The result sucks, right? But I don’t think the result is any way indicative of the way the game went. We talked about the maturity of our team and a lot of the narrative has been about that we can’t defend. It was the best defensive game we’ve played the entire season. I don’t know if we gave up more than four scoring chances for the whole hockey game, including the third period. It’s the way it goes.
We would’ve liked to have more offense and to have scored more and grown a bigger lead. I thought we had plenty of opportunities to do that, and we didn’t. We let them hang around in the game, and like I said, we did lose composure, I thought — not composure, but we got distracted by the 3-1 goal and perhaps that is an area we’d like to have back and do a better job of. But there was a lot to like about the game today.
On whether he would be comfortable with Hutchinson in net for a run of games:
I’m not going to answer hypotheticals tonight.
On Hutchinson’s play in relief:
Obviously, it didn’t go very well, but that is a challenging scenario. He comes in cold and he is not expected to play. He goes in the second period, and other than a couple of dump-ins, I don’t know that he had any shots through two periods. That is a tough ask of any goalie, but he is a part of the team and he wants the opportunity. He’s in the net and he’d like to see positive results, but he was in tough here today. I take a lot more from the games he’s played for us previous than the game tonight.
