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The Toronto Maple Leafs have bounced back from their early struggles and climbed the standings in the Atlantic Division, but Sheldon Keefe is still not pleased about how his club is playing in spite of their success.
The Leafs pulled out their eighth win in the last nine games with a 5-4 victory over the Buffalo Sabres at Key Bank Center on Saturday. Morgan Rielly provided the game-winner with 11.8 seconds left in regulation and Joseph Woll made 23 saves in his NHL debut, but that overshadowed an inconsistent performance in which Toronto could not hold a pair of two-goal leads against an offensively challenged Sabres club.
Keefe scrambled his forward lines going into the second of back-to-back games looking for some jump and to give players like Ondrej Kase and Nick Ritchie more opportunity, but the Leafs did not give a good effort and likely would not have beaten any team other than Buffalo.
"It didn't matter what the lines were tonight. When you're work and compete like we did tonight, the lines don't have a chance, so you can't really take too much away from it." Keefe said. "(The third) was our best period. We didn't give up a shot in the first 11 minutes or so, we scored a big power-play goal to give us (a two-goal lead), and then it gets away on us on a couple shifts and momentum swings a little bit. Towards the end ,we dug in and had some of our best shifts at the end (with) the game on the line. So there's some positive things there in the third, but the first two periods were dreadful."
As Toronto begins a three-game homestand against the Nashville Predators on Tuesday, Keefe continues to search for answers and the right combinations with his lineup. At practice at Ford Performance Centre on Monday, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews were reunited on the top line with Ritchie on the left side. John Tavares and William Nylander were partnered with Alex Kerfoot, Ondrej Kase returned to the checking line alongside Pierre Engvall and David Kampf, and Wayne Simmonds returned to the fourth line with Jason Spezza and Michael Bunting.
Keefe rotated the bottom pairing blueliners at practice, so it is unclear whether Rasmus Sandin, Travis Dermott or Timothy Liljegren will sit against the Preds.
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