Craig Berube addressed the media after his team’s 5-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, which dropped the Maple Leafs’ record to 31-30-13.
On the team’s lackadaisical performance:
We had one player who showed up tonight, and that was our goalie. That is really what it boils down to.
It’s very disappointing. I thought the last couple of games were pretty good, and we were building. As I talked about, we were staying competitive and playing together out there.
We did not have that tonight.
On whether it can be difficult to manufacture urgency at this time of the season:
It can be. I am not going to sit here and say it is easy. But again, if you don’t have urgency and you are not competitive, you are just letting each other down. You’re letting that sweater down. That is the bottom line.
On the Blues’ ability to easily gain the zone:
Well, it’s because we didn’t check. We had no pressure. We let them come at us all night. They had the puck all night. We didn’t check it off them.
As I said, checking is a will, a want, and an urgency. We let them do whatever they wanted with the puck tonight.
On experimenting with William Nylander at center:
Yeah, well, we are down a center, right? I played him at center quite a bit to see if we could get something going.
I thought he was fine at center. I didn’t have an issue with it at all. I kept using him there.
On the report that Radko Gudas, who is injured, wants to play in the rematch vs. the Leafs on Monday:
You just have to go out and play. You have to be highly competitive and play hard against him. That is what we have to do.
You can’t go out and do stupid things with suspensions and things like that. That is not what it is all about. But we definitely have to go out and play a physical, hard game against that team.
