Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens which dropped the Leafs’ record to 28-11-8.
On where the game got away from the team in the second period:
We gave them that goal early in the second period. That gave them life, obviously. It put life back in the building.
I thought we were fine after that up until about the second timeout. At the first TV timeout, the shots were 4-3 for us. I thought we responded well after their first goal for the first little bit.
There were a couple of sequences there — one around the 13-minute mark where they had four or five real good looks in a sequence that was entirely offside. That gave a lot of life to their team. It turned the game and emotion in the building.
We struggled to connect on passes after that with breakouts. Our game got disconnected.
On Ilya Samsonov’s performance:
I thought he was great.
On the takeaways from tonight’s result:
Just to stay with it. We played a great first period. We were in complete control of the game. I thought the first couple of shifts of the second period were good, too. We just let up a little bit. We lost a puck battle, and the puck ended up in our net. Now, instead of 2-0 with full control, it is 2-1 with some life in the building.
You could feel the game changing. That is really it. You can’t let up for even a second. This is a team, in this building especially, that is going to come and play hard. Just in the last week, they won in New York. They beat the Jets pretty handily in here last time out.
This is a team that if you give them life and a chance, they are going to come hard on you. They did in the second.
I thought we were good again in the third, but we couldn’t get one by him.
On whether the team under-estimated the Habs with all of the injuries:
No. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have had the type of first period that we did. don’t think that is the case at all.
As I said, the team is well aware of the fact that they just beat two of the top teams in the NHL in the last even days. That is not it at all or we wouldn’t have started the way we did.
We let up for just a second, and they got life. Full marks to them. They played hard. That was a fast and competitive and intense game. It is as loud of an environment as we have played in all season long.
There was a lot going in the game. It was just a good hockey game.
On the challenge against the Islanders on Monday:
I haven’t thought one second about it.
