Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 2-0 loss in Game 1 of the best-of-five playoff qualifying series versus the Blue Jackets.
Keefe on Frederik Andersen’s performance:
I thought he made some big saves, for sure. There were a few times they got some really quality looks. He was very good on those. There were some perimeter chances down the wing that he did a really good job of holding his ground on. Obviously, he misread the one in the third there that got by him, but he kept them to one goal. As far as I am concerned, he did his job. We’ve got to find a way to give him some help.
Keefe on the Tavares-Marner line:
I thought they had a pretty good first period, actually. They had some pretty good offensive-zone shifts and were around the net a little bit. They didn’t get a chance to really build upon that. We will have to look at that a little bit closer.
That is another part of it: They got a tough matchup there too, right? Gavrikov and Savard are tough defenders just the same. We’ve already talked about [Werenski and Jones]. It is a tough matchup for them. We need to get a little bit more from them, but we need more from everybody, obviously.
We didn’t get anything from anyone today. We only generated one power play. All of those types of things make it harder than it needs to be. We expected it to be hard. We expected it to be uncomfortable. I thought this one today could’ve gone either way. It didn’t go our way, so we’ve got to regroup here and find a way to be better next time out.
Keefe on Nick Robertson’s NHL debut:
I thought Robby had some good moments in the game. In fact, he had a great look early in the hockey game and it just got the toe of the goaltender there. That was a big moment that could’ve put us in a real good spot. It was good to see him get into the position to be available to get the shot. Otherwise, I thought he was good in a game that was difficult to play. That would be by far the hardest game he’s played in, I would imagine. He is going to have to continue to find his way through that.
I thought Kerfoot and Kappy had legs and were on the puck and they gave us some pretty good shifts as a line.
Keefe on the limited minutes for the fourth line:
I thought they had a real tough start to the game — some long sequences in our zone. It is not what you want out of your fourth line, so it made it difficult to really find any sort of rhythm with them. Of course, once we are down early in the third period, it becomes even harder.
