Behind the bench of a meaningless game to end the regular season, the Maple Leafs head coach elected to find a way to pre-scout his first-round playoff opponent early.
Behind the bench of a meaningless game to end the regular season, the Maple Leafs head coach elected to find a way to pre-scout his first-round playoff opponent early.
TAMPA, Fla. — You can't blame Sheldon Keefe for his honesty following his team's 6-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning to end the regular season.
With the game rendered meaningless for both clubs, who have already locked in their Stanley Cup Playoffs opponent for this weekend, Keefe spent the intermissions putting his focus on what really mattered.
"I'm not afraid to admit to you that this is the first time in a regular season game I was watching video of another team during the intermissions," Keefe said. "So we're working all we can to get ourselves prepared and ready to go. And that's really where our mind is at."
The Maple Leafs were down 6-1 before eventually bringing it to a 6-4 final score. They didn't look particularly sharp in the game and matched their season-high losing streak of four games to end the season.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcRryIXLL0[/embed]
After emphasizing finishing the season strong and sending the message across that flipping the switch to playoff mode isn't so easy, Keefe rang a different tone after the game, now that he was living in a new reality.
"I couldn't tell you the score of any of those games, including the one we just finished," Keefe dismissed.
But what about the details in the game and the things they had to clean up going into the weekend?
"Yeah, they're not there all the time. They're not going to be. I mean, it's human nature."
It's hard to fault the coach for a bit of a flip here. He's not about to tear a strip into the team after openly admitting on Saturday that he was also caught up in trying to help Auston Matthews reach 70 goals, something he fell just one goal short of doing in the end. He even characterized it as a distraction. So, being critical of his team after the fact would be a bit hypocritical.
"We've got to make sure that we're prepared and take these next couple of days to do our due diligence and make sure that we're recovering and ready for Saturday," Matthew said.
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