With a 1-4 record in overtime, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe admitted it’s time to address the team’s play during the 3-on-3 session.
The Toronto Maple Leafs never had much of a chance to generate anything in the overtime session of their 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Thursday.
And when they did, John Tavares, who had been on the ice for an entire 50 seconds while the Devils controlled all of the play, turned the puck over as quickly as he received it. Seven seconds later, New Jersey’s Yegor Sharangovich scored the winner to extend his team’s winning streak to 11 games.
Overtime has been a tricky thing for the Maple Leafs, who haven’t had a lot of success with it as of late. They fell to 1-4 this season when the game extended beyond 60 minutes.
“You’ve got to get some strategy and make sure you are on the same page, especially when you’re defending,” Tavares said of playing at 3-on-3.
It’s one thing if the Maple Leafs were just a bit snakebitten. But that’s not what’s happening here. In three of their four losses in overtime, Toronto didn’t register a single shot attempt and went on to give up the winner in the opening minute.
Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe hasn’t spent any time working on 3-on-3 during practices this season. Generally referring to the overtime session as “chaotic” and having other areas of the game that his team needed improvement on (namely scoring at 5-on-5), it appears he could be changing his tune.
“Normally for me it’s quite far down the list because there’s a lot of things that have to happen to even get an opportunity to be in that position,” Keefe said following Friday’s practice. “But clearly when it hasn’t been going our way here, it needs some attention and more consistency in terms of how we handle that situation.”
Last season, the Maple Leafs were an even 6-6 in overtime. The latest missed opportunity left the club with just nine wins in 18 games this season.
“I think we’ve just got to start with the puck more,” Mitch Marner said of overtime. “Try to win that opening draw. We almost had it. Guy [Nico Hischier] was just able to slip by and get it back.”
Whatever the solution is, it didn’t help that Auston Matthews never had a chance to get on the ice for the overtime on Thursday.