Craig Berube addressed the media after the Maple Leafs’ 3-0 loss to the Ottawa Senators, which dropped the team’s record to 9-6-2.
On the team’s underwhelming performance:
There wasn’t much good to talk about with the game overall. We got outskated. They wanted it more than us. That is the bottom line.
On how the team can get going offensively at five-on-five:
Tonight, we didn’t have the puck, so it is pretty tough to score any goals when you don’t have the puck. They had the puck the whole game, pretty much, until the third period.
We have to generate more attempts at the net with people at the net and create offense that way. We just didn’t do a good enough job tonight. Overall, it’s just not a good game.
On whether this performance was a one-off:
Going into this game, we were pretty happy with our game. I get that there were some low-event games. At five-on-five, we were checking hard. We had more offensive-zone time than the other teams.
Yeah, we want to score more at five-on-five, for sure, but at the same time, we can’t sabotage the game like we did right away in the game by giving them a 3-on-1 where they score. That is not going to work.
On the different approaches he used to try to snap the team out of its funk tonight:
I am on the guys about things or switching the lines up trying to find some chemistry and some combinations tonight. I switched the lines up a bunch tonight trying to find something. Overall, there wasn’t much at all.
On whether this is the worst performance of the season so far:
Well, pretty close. It wasn’t good. In the other games we lost, there were different situations, but tonight, we didn’t have control of the game at all.
On William Nylander’s performance and whether the issue that forced him out of practice caught up to him:
Willy showed bursts of things when he had the puck and did some things, but I am not going to get into all of that about why he wasn’t at practice the other day. He was fine to play. That is the bottom line.
