Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 4-3 OT loss in Game 5.
On whether the failure to put the Habs away tonight is another step in the learning curve for his team:
Montreal came out really hard — not unlike in Game 1. We didn’t deal with that well. We got ourselves in a hole there. Is it part of the learning curve? Perhaps. It certainly looked that way.
On the message to Rasmus Sandin after a tough night and Alex Galchenyuk after his giveaway in OT:
It is like any other mistake that you make. You want the player to be aware of the mistake, which in and of itself is pretty obvious. They know that. It’s more just being aware of what was available there, what the better play was, and then you park it, move on, and keep playing.
Hockey is a game of mistakes. It happens. You have to push on. When you are playing better as a team and mistakes happen, they don’t seem to hurt you. When you are not playing well and you make mistakes, you open the door for the opposition. Those mistakes cost you.
On William Nylander’s ice time finishing at seven minutes fewer than Matthews and Marner:
Yeah, he doesn’t play on that line. That is the first part of it. That line gets a lot of difficult assignments and key faceoffs coming out of timeouts and stuff like that.
Willy got a few extra shifts here today. He played with those guys a little bit. The discrepancy is probably a little more than I’d like it to be here today, but it is part of chasing the game a little bit.
Willy has a tendency to keep his shifts shorter than a lot of other guys. Over the course of the game, that is going to create some discrepancy. I am not sure what the actual number of shifts difference it was, but I was aware of trying to get Willy more shifts.
Willy is not a full-time part of that line. There is going to be some discrepancy as a result. There is no doubt Willy was really good again tonight.
On Jack Campbell’s performance:
It wasn’t his best, obviously. He is playing at a really high level for us. Today, like our team, it wasn’t his best, but he has earned the opportunity and trust that he will bounce back.
On why he has faith that his team can win a third consecutive game in Montreal with a bounce-back effort in Game 6:
We are a good team. If you look at the two games we have lost, we haven’t played nearly at our best, and yet both games were right there. When we have played well, we have been in control of games pretty well.
We have lots of reasons to be confident and lots of reasons to believe in our group. At the same time, we got another reminder today that Montreal is going to make it really difficult. They are a good team with very strong goaltending. That in and of itself gives them lots of belief.
