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Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 4-3 overtime win over Edmonton that improved the Leafs’ record to 6-1-1 in the season series vs. the Oilers and 22-10-2 overall.


On the team digging in and fighting back from 3-1 down:

We dug ourselves a hole in that second period. We didn’t like it, obviously. I thought that, given the time off that they had, the Oilers were going to make it really difficult and would have lots of legs in the third period. We would have to match that. I thought our guys did.

Obviously, it took us a while. I thought we had a number of opportunities before it actually went in the net for us, but the guys did stay with it. The Tavares line was outstanding, evened the game up for us, and gave us a chance to get the second point.

On moving Galchenyuk back up with Tavares and Nylander in the third period:

I thought Galchenyuk had played well until that point. I hadn’t used him very much, and yet the shifts that he had, I thought they were very good. We didn’t have much happening for us on any of the lines in the second period. I felt I needed to change some things.

As I said this morning, Galchenyuk hadn’t done anything to come off of that line. He had played well. It was more just about giving Simmonds that opportunity there. Just the way it works out with the way the game is going, we needed to make some changes.

It was nice to see that line continue the way it had been playing — in particular Galchenyuk playing the way that he has. To see it get rewarded — first of all for John to get us a huge goal, and then followed up by Willy — is really good. You can’t ignore Galchenyuk’s contributions to both of those goals.

On Jack Campbell’s criticism of his own performance:

I didn’t find he was that sharp tonight for sure. But that is the way it goes. Those are the kinds of things that happen as you start to play more games. It is more challenging to have your best stuff all the time. That is part of what is going to come of this where he is playing more. He is going to have nights where he is not feeling it.

In the first and third periods especially, I thought his teammates really took care of him today and gave us every opportunity to hang around in the game. I think we stayed under 20 shots tonight. That is really positive for us, especially against a team like that.

We like a lot about what we did in two of the three periods. But two out of the three isn’t enough against a team like this. We don’t like that we gave them a point here today. Obviously, we love how we fought our way back and got the win for Soupy.

On what he didn’t like about the second period and how the team played the McDavid line in that period:

That was part of it. Even when those guys weren’t on the ice, I thought we just stopped playing. We got the goal — the Engvall goal — and I thought we just lost our legs from there. We stopped skating. We fought the puck. We didn’t get through the neutral zone very well. We had, at 5v5, really nothing happening around the net. I thought we had a good power play in the second period, but it didn’t go in for us.

There was not a lot happening offensively. I thought defensively we stopped skating and our process fell apart a little bit there.

On the power play, now 0 for its last 18:

I thought tonight was the best it has been in a long time. If it looks like it did today consistently, we would be more than happy with that. Matthews again on the backside had a look and it somehow rests on the goalie’s pad. I’m not sure I have seen that before. Things like that are happening right now, but our process is quite good.

I don’t know how many shots we generated or attempts we generated on the power play, but I think it was substantial for the limited amount of time we had on it. It is easy to focus on the fact that this has been a long stretch where it hasn’t gone in for us, but that is a useless activity. We just have to focus on each power play that comes and the process that we put forth and not worry much about what has happened in the past.

I liked a lot about our power play today. We keep looking like that, and it is certainly going to go in for us.