Craig Berube addressed the media after his team’s 6-3 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, which dropped the Maple Leafs’ record to 5-5-1.
On the team’s performance:
For me, we were complicating the game at times tonight. We got burned on it. We forced pucks when we didn’t need to and turned them over. They came at us, and as we’ve talked about, they’re a talented and good rush team. They capitalized on their opportunities. More than anything, that is what it boils down to. I felt like we were disconnected at times getting through the neutral zone. It cost us.
On the game getting away from the team after it looked like momentum was on their side following Sammy Blais’ 2-1 goal early in the second period:
We made a mistake, and it was in our net again. We have to clean those up.
There were a lot of good things tonight, too. We had a lot of good opportunities and offensive-zone time. We didn’t capitalize on them well enough, obviously.
If you don’t take care of the puck and don’t take care of certain teams’ tendencies, you can get burned by it. That is what happened tonight.
It is attention to detail, understanding situations, and understanding the positioning of where you should be. We just didn’t have it enough tonight. We got burned.
On the team’s execution with the puck:
We did a lot of good things with it tonight. Could we execute better? Yeah. There were some plays that we just missed on it, or they weren’t clean enough. But it’s not from a lack of opportunities or working to get them. We had a number of them, and a lot of attempts and shots on net.
At the same time, as I talked about, we forced things at times when we didn’t need to. That is where the disconnect comes from, and they made us pay.
On the message in the timeout after the 1-0 Blue Jackets goal:
“Let’s go here.” We were on our heels a little bit to start that period.
I called a timeout to take a closer look at that goal. It was really close — too close to challenge.
