Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 6-3 loss to the Nashville Predators that dropped the Leafs’ record to 39-18-5 on the season.
On the team’s start:
They played a lot harder than us at the start of the game for sure.
On Ondrej Kase’s status:
I was told he was doing okay — certainly, a lot better than when he came off of the ice. Obviously, with these kinds of things, we will take some time, re-evaluate him in the morning, and go from there.
On seeing Kase scramble back to the bench:
You feel for the guy.
On Auston Matthews’ first game back:
I thought it took him a while to get back into the game, but once he did, he was real good. He could’ve had three or four tonight and changed the game. There were a couple of posts that he hit there. 10 shots on net. He was in alone at one time there. The goal made a good save on him.
It was a huge goal for us in the third, but he could’ve had a bunch more. He did his thing.
On Erik Kallgren’s play:
I thought he was good. There were some tough saves in there for sure. I thought he did a good job for us. Five is a lot, but the fourth one is probably the toughest one of all. We are right there. We are on our way back. We took a bad penalty, and it ends up in our net. That is usually the way those kinds of things go.
He definitely made some saves.
On whether he has any concerns about the team’s performance tonight:
I don’t have any concerns.
On what Nashville did well defensively:
They play hard. They play structured. They didn’t give us anything off the rush. It was a forechecking game on both sides. They forechecked better than us early in the game. I thought we got better at that once we realized that was what the game was really going to require.
It made it hard that way — hard to get much happening at the net. Defensively, I thought we did a good job. We didn’t give him a great deal. That allowed us to hang around in the game.
That is one of the league’s best goalies at the other end playing with the lead. Trying to find a way out of a hole is not a good way to win.
On whether Jack Campbell will be back practicing this week:
He skated yesterday. I don’t know if he skated today or not. He is not on the trip with us. I don’t know where that is at. I would probably say it is aggressive that he would be a full participant in practice, but it seems like he is getting himself back up and running.
