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Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 6-3 loss to the Vancouver Canucks that dropped the Leafs’ record to 0-3-2 in their last five and 28-13-5 on the season.



On his concern level after five losses in a row:

I am concerned about our goaltending, obviously. We have to get that sorted out. But I am not concerned about our team. I believe in our group. We played well enough to win here tonight. We played well enough to win the other night. We have to get better goaltending to give our group confidence here.

On what the coaching staff can do for its goaltenders at this point and Frederik Andersen’s latest status:

I think we have talked enough about Fred’s situation. You guys all know that he is making progress, but we don’t know when he is going to return to play.

Jack Campbell has played outstanding hockey for us this season. He will go back in net next game. I know he is a better goaltender than how he has played of late. He has shown it for us. He is going to get a chance to go in and play a big game. Our group absolutely believes in him. He has a chance to go back in and respond.

Dave Rittich is trying to find his way here and get comfortable. Both guys, from how they have played here of late, are capable of better. They have played better in the league. We can play better in front of them. We can play better than we did tonight.

Credit to Vancouver. They played hard. It was a much different game tonight. I still feel like we did enough things to win the hockey game here today. Some things are difficult to outplay.

We just have to remain confident as a group. We get a day off tomorrow, and we travel out to Winnipeg for a couple of big hockey games coming up against them. We can’t let the results we have had here of late disrupt what we are trying to do as a team. There have been a lot of really positive things. Sometimes the puck goes into the net more than it should.

For anyone who has ever played, it is a difficult thing to overcome when you are trying to get going and you are trying to get moving. We built the lead here today in the third period. The group was going pretty good. We had gotten a power-play goal and a shorthanded goal. It is a tough one to give up there.

There are a lot of positive things happening with our team. Let’s put it that way. We just have to continue to build on that.

On Zach Bogosian’s status after leaving the game injured:

I don’t have official status. We will find out more in the coming days here. He wasn’t close to returning tonight, and it looks like he is definitely going to miss some time. As to the extent of it, I don’t have that update yet.

On the process the team needs to undertake to prepare for Winnipeg on Thursday:

Tomorrow is a day off for us — a rest and travel day. We will welcome Nick Foligno to our team here. Ben Hutton and Stefan Noesen will join them. That will, of course, give our group a boost.

We have to remain confident. It is difficult to do when you are not getting the results. But as I said, I think our team has done a number of good things here — even in these two games that we have lost to Vancouver.

Going into Winnipeg, we just have to push past it and still believe in what we are doing. Our goaltenders have to find their game. We have to overcome that.

On William Nylander’s response after missing the team meeting:

Willy was great. He was really good here tonight. That line was really good. John was really good. It was a great response.

We’ve seen that Willy is capable of taking over hockey games and being a major difference maker like he was tonight. You are looking for a response here tonight, but more importantly, we are looking for a more consistent response for the remainder of the season and definitely the playoffs.