Sheldon Keefe addressed the media after the Maple Leafs’ 1-0 overtime win over the Winnipeg Jets which improved the team’s record to 24-14-8.
On Ilya Samsonov’s first-star performance/shutout:
Perfect. He was excellent from start to finish. He was good early in the game when they were shooting the puck from everywhere on the sides. He was great there. He was obviously great on the few high-end chances that they had.
It is just another building block for him. He looks as confident as ever.
On Samsonov fighting his way back from rock bottom:
Credit to him, right? He put in the work. Virtually everyone, I am sure, had counted him out and written him off. Even internally, there are questions, right? How is he going to be able to bounce back here?
Credit to him for staying with it. Credit to all of the people and resources around him to help support him. Tre put together a plan for him on how they were going to manage his time away from our team. Credit to Curtis Sanford.
Credit to all of those guys, but if Sammy can’t put in the work, pick himself up, and get to work, it doesn’t have a chance. This has been building.
I wasn’t surprised by the way he played in Seattle the other night. Some of the saves tonight… On a 2-on-0, you are expecting the goalie is going to be overwhelmed there. Credit to him.
Some good fortune is coming back his way through hard work and belief in himself. Obviously, we are really happy for him. He has bounced back from a tough spot here.
"HOLY MACKINAW!"
SAMMY 2 ON 0 SAVE vs Winnipeg Jets courtesy of Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph. #LeafsForever @Bonsie1951 @Jim_Ralph
1/24/2024 pic.twitter.com/qAfDTTxyLh
— LeafsJellyHD (@LeafsJelly) January 25, 2024
On how the team got the shots on goal under control after the shots were 16-4 Winnipeg in the first period:
If you were to go back and watch their shots on goal from the first period, I would say 80% of them came directly from our stick to their stick. They shot it at our net. We stopped turning the puck over. That was a big one.
Through the second period, I don’t think we gave up a shot in the last 11 minutes. It just felt like our game was starting to come a little bit. We were starting to carry the play a little bit more.
Now, they make it really difficult to get to their net, so we didn’t get a whole lot accomplished — or anything accomplished, really — offensively, and the scoreboard reflected that.
I thought we started to break out better. The one thing that I thought… We didn’t have it tonight, clearly. It was not a good night for us from start to finish pretty much. But I thought we still defended well.
They got in behind us a couple of times. Sammy had to make a couple of really big saves, but this is as low-event of an NHL game as you are going to find.
On the inability to much of generate anything offensively in the game:
Credit to them. In the first period, they forechecked well. They had good sticks. They were on top of us.
We couldn’t execute a pass. We didn’t have a lot of life. We didn’t have a lot of energy. We didn’t have a lot of legs.
Now that we won the game and everything, to me, it looked like a team that looked like it was still on the plane and still on the West Coast. That is what it looked and felt like.
I think it is a little overblown, that whole thing, but sometimes it does catch up to you. That is what it looked like tonight.
We get out of here with two points. I like how we did stay with it. We had to kill some penalties at the end. We found a way to get the second point and get out of here.
We will get three sleeps before we play again. I expect us to be a lot better, as I am sure they will be when they get in their building.
On sitting William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and Auston Matthews on the power play after the 2-on-0 against:
They make a mistake in that spot. It is a chance for me to hold them accountable and get some other guys involved.
As we all know, those guys have been excellent for us and carried the mail a lot of times for us. Tonight, they made a mistake, and others had to get a chance.
On how the 2-on-0 transpired:
It is not a night for me to break down things and assess things. We didn’t have it. We addressed it. We move on.
The guys came back and got a lot better in the game. Auston scores us the game-winning goal. Those guys will be better the next time out.
On how to get the power play back on track:
Today is not a good day to assess anything. We were not ourselves today. That is why all I can go to is the travel, the road trip, and coming back home here.
Even through Vancouver and Seattle, in those last two games, we were far more connected — not necessarily on the power play but just our overall game.
Today, coming off of yesterday’s practice, I thought the power play looked great. I thought it did really good work with Guy (Boucher) yesterday. I was actually excited to watch the power play today because of the work that they had put in yesterday.
Once I saw how we were playing in the game, I wanted nothing to do with a power play. I had a feeling it was going to look like that, unfortunately.
On Nick Robertson’s performance:
Huge. We had a lot of guys who just didn’t have it tonight. I thought Robertson did have it. He was the one guy who seemed to be able to generate some shots and challenge the goaltender a bit.
We talked about the boost that he gave us at the end of a long road trip in Seattle. I thought he gave us a boost again tonight. That is what you need.
We were talking about as coaches in the second intermission. It was one of those games where we were going to need somebody else to step up. I didn’t feel like our top guys had it tonight.
Robbie was certainly a candidate for me. That is why you start to double him up a little bit and get him involved in overtime. He was all around the puck and made a play. Auston finished it.
It was not a perfect night for us by any means, but they are two important points against a good team that we will take. We will take advantage of the rest we have here before our final game before the break.
