Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after his team’s 6-5 shootout win over the Montreal Canadiens in the opening game of the 2023-24 season.
On what he takes away from a game like this:
Two points. That is about it.
On finding a way to grab two points out of a sloppy game:
The game presented almost anything you can think of. It is all over the place, which you don’t love to see. Chalk it up as an early-season game. These things are always easier to process when you get the two points. But there are a lot of things we have to do better than we did tonight.
On Fraser Minten’s first NHL game:
I thought it was good. You could tell that the game is not a preseason game. It is played a lot faster. It is a lot more intense. There are no shifts off.
You could tell he was adjusting to that in his first exposure to that. I thought he got better as the game went on, which was really good to see.
On whether he liked anyone’s performance tonight:
I thought our fourth line was outstanding. Kampf, Gregor, and Reaves were great. Reaves, with the way he started the game with two great hits, gets the crowd involved and draws an instigator on a fight… It gives the team every opportunity to score on the power play, and it was consistently good throughout the game.
That is what I take away from the game. I was really pleased to see that.
On the successful offside challenge on the Habs’ 3-0 goal:
You are relieved. There was a decent amount of time from the entry to the goal. I had forgotten that they had a tight entry there. Our video staff — Jordan Bean and Sam Kim — are all over it. They radioed in right away to Dean Chynoweth on the bench that it may be offside.
We told the guys to give us a little bit of time, but they didn’t need much time. They were pretty certain that it was.
On Auston Matthews stepping up in the second half of the game with a hat trick:
That is what you need from your best people at times when it is looking dire and the game is kind of slipping away. You need that.
I would like it to start that way and get out in front of it, but I liked the way those guys responded. That line got better as the game wore on. For Auston to come through and have a start like that is good for him and really good for us.
On Ilya Samsonov conceding five goals:
Tough game for him not having a lot of action with big gaps between shots, especially in the second and third periods. There were a lot of really dangerous shots and looks.
You get the two points. You move on from it. Before I say that, he stood his ground while shorthanded in overtime, and he was perfect in the shootout. Let’s build on that.
On the mood on the bench after the team fell behind 5-3:
We lost some life for sure. It was tough in those moments. We needed to get one. We were able to do that. We pulled the goalie early and gave the guys a chance to go. Now you feel like you are there.
It was definitely tough, especially with the nature of the way some of the goals were happening. You just feel like it is not your night. I don’t know how many times we fell down or whiffed on a puck. A lot of that was going on tonight.
On the challenges the Habs present despite their bottom-of-the-league projection:
We played them three times in preseason and saw a lot of their players in split-squad looks. They have lots of skill. They move the puck well. They are really deep down the middle of the ice, which presents some challenges. I think their defense moves well and they play well with the puck.
They are very opportunistic every time we play them. We made too many mistakes and made it easy on them. When you do that, they have guys who can score, as they showed tonight.
On the 4-on-3 penalty kill coming up big in OT:
You are trying to check as many boxes as you can as you go through preseason and camp. We covered 6-on-5. We covered 5-on-6. We covered 5-on-3 and 4-on-3 on offense. We didn’t cover 3 vs. 4.
We did cover overtime in a meeting. We had a shootout this week. We kind of touched on everything. We even had a meeting on coach’s challenges earlier in the week, too. Everything showed up here tonight. You are as prepared as you can be in those moments.
Dean was able to talk to the guys in the timeout. I thought we had a pretty good OT as well. We had some chances to win. We got carried away a little bit and ended up having to take a penalty. It is a big moment. Getting through that gives you a chance to get the second point.
On what the coach’s challenge meeting entails:
We are going through all of the examples trying to get clear on the different things that are challengeable. We are sort of refining our process, how we are going to communicate through it, and how that is going to work. We have all the coaches in there.
Brad Treliving and Shane Doan were in there as well. It is something we do every year. Jordan Bean takes the lead on our coach’s challenges. He does a lot of work to be as prepared as possible. He has been absolutely terrific at it. He leads the presentation and gives the coaches the information on what to expect. He is pretty dialed in on that.
On the team pulling through twice at 6-on-5 late in the game:
I had a lot of confidence in our 6-on-5. Guy Boucher has done a great job preparing the guys. We spent probably more time on our 6-on-5 through preseason than we ever have in practices. Credit to Guy for prioritizing that. I have liked it in preseason when we had a chance as well.
I had confidence that the guys would give us a chance. You never know. The net is empty, and if they shoot one in, it is pretty much over. I did have confidence in the group and the preparation that they had done with Guy. It came through for us tonight.
On successfully pulling the goalie early with four minutes and change left in the game:
I don’t consider it to be that early when you are down two. It is circumstantial. At that time, a lot of the time you are making a decision based on the energy levels of your best players. You are making sure you are managing that right.
I believe it was an icing at that time. I was going to wait one more shift, but there was an icing. Matthews and Marner had just come off from a shift previously. I wanted to give them one more shift to recover. I asked them if they were good to go at that time, and they were. Tavares and Nylander were already fresh.
With the goalie-out stuff, a lot of it is about managing the bench and making sure the top guys are rested.
On whether his top players ever say they are not ready to go out in a late-game situation:
Usually not, but I can tell when they are certainly not ready. You can tell by the way they are breathing. You can just tell they are not ready.
In that moment, a lot of times late in games, you need — in a lot of cases — five forwards. We used four tonight, but a lot of times you are using five forwards at 6-on-5. You usually have to put your third or fourth line out for a shift for a breather. You have to give them a breath if you want them to have the juice that you need to tie the game.
On John Klingberg’s first game as a Leaf:
I thought he was great tonight. If I could go back to one other thing that stands out, I thought the play of John Klingberg was really good tonight. He played with lots of authority with the puck. He shot the puck when it was his turn to shoot it. He moved it with confidence.
He didn’t get a lot of game reps with the power play [in preseason], but I thought he did a good job — especially as we settled in during the second period — on the power play.
He was another real standout for me tonight. It was really good to see despite the fact that he hasn’t played a lot.
