Craig Berube addressed the media after the Maple Leafs’ 6-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings in the season opener.
On where the game went wrong:
The second period.
I thought we started off fine in the second, but we didn’t close anything off in our zone. We spent too much time in our zone. They eventually capitalized. We tired ourselves out because we three-quarter-ice’d ourselves in the second period.
That cost us the hockey game.
On the backdoor goals against:
That’s the result.
In saying that, we have to take care of those seams. We know they like them. We didn’t do a good enough job there, either.
For me, that is the difference in the hockey game.
On Anthony Stolarz’s performance:
He was good — very good. Until we want to value the importance of second periods and how we need to play them, that is what can happen.
On Steven Lorentz’s injury status and the impact it had on the lineup:
We’ll have to evaluate him tomorrow.
I don’t know. We were shuffling around. I used different guys there. They ended up scoring another goal with Nylander with them.
In the third period, we came out and were in the game. We took a penalty that was unnecessary — we didn’t need to do that, either — but we had a good power play going and took a penalty.
We beat ourselves, in my opinion. It’s not that Detroit didn’t play well. They played well, but we were right there with them. We got the lead. We came out in the second and didn’t play the way we should’ve played.
On the struggles in the long-change period:
That is part of hockey. If you don’t exit the zone and get pucks into the other zone with fresh people out there, it is hard.
On that one shift, Carlo might’ve spent three minutes out there. It’s stuff like that.
We have to work a lot harder in the second periods at managing the game and exiting our zone. We had the puck on our tape twice on two goals, and our guys were just standing and watching the guy instead of working to get out of your zone.
That’s really the game, for me.
On Max Domi’s willingness to shoot through two games of the season:
He’s been shooting. I thought he played a good game. He shot the puck and was pretty direct. He had another chance to put another one in, but he missed the net. I thought he played a good game.
