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Keefe's camp focus on team defense, Leafs face Habs in exhibition

July 15, 2020, 9:28 AM ET [520 Comments]
Mike Augello
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The Toronto Maple Leafs had an advantage through Phase 2 with most of their players working on their conditioning and ramping up towards the training camp phase of the Return to Play Plan, but with coach Sheldon Keefe and his staff on hand for Phase 3, there has been an emphasis on an aspect of their play that has continued to trouble the Leafs in the last few years and that is their performance in the defensive zone.

Toronto was the third highest scoring team during the abbreviated regular season with 238 goals (3.4 goals per game), but that offensive prowess was often negated by a disorganized team defense that frequently gave away the puck and was unable to win puck battles to prevent scoring chances.

"I don't think it's any secret that we've got to be a lot better defensively. There's no area of our game defensively that we were satisfied with and we're not kidding ourselves. We know that there's a lot of areas that that we need to look at and frankly, it's every area." Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said on Tuesday. "From all three zones, everything that we're doing there, we're either tweaking it and making changes structurally to how we were playing or we're having more focused intensity and commitment to the habits and detail within it. We fully expect our guys to be a lot better defensively when we come back and of course we're going to need to be given what's at stake."

The Leafs were 27th in the NHL (227 goals against) at the break. Their issue of keeping the puck out of their net led to a roller coaster of inconsistency throughout the year, but was not solely the responsibility of goalie Frederik Andersen or a defensive corps plagued by injuries throughout the season.

"When we talk about our team game better defensively, it's easy of course to focus on the defense, but our message here through this camp is that it's not just on the defense. Our forwards have got to do more work and we've got to be a five man unit, as of how we defend in each zone and a lot of that work falls on the forwards, that's where we're gonna need to get a lot better."

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The NHL released their schedule for exhibition games to take place in the bubble before the start of the play-in round on August 1. The Leafs will play on Tuesday, July 28 at Scotiabank Arena against the Montreal Canadiens at 8pm, five days before they open the best-of-five series against Columbus.



The broadcast schedule for the first five days of the playoffs was also released and as expected, the Leafs will get the 8pm slot on Day 2 (August 2) with the other play-in series in the East debuting on August 1, but will play Game 2 at 4pm on Tuesday, August 4 with the NY Rangers – Carolina playing in primetime.

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