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TRAIKOS Sheldon Keefe foreshadows Maple Leafs playoff collapse in Amazon docuseries

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    Michael Traikos Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe reacts to a play against Montreal Canadiens. Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe reacts to a play against Montreal Canadiens. USA Today Sports Article content

    There is a scene in Episode 1 of the just-released Amazon docuseries, All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, where the curtain drops and viewers are given a glimpse of the real Sheldon Keefe, F-bombs and all.

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    It’s the second week of the season and the head coach is in GM Kyle Dubas’ office talking about the previous night’s 3-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers. Keefe is fuming. But what has him mad isn’t so much the loss. Rather, it’s how his star player, Auston Matthews, interpreted the loss in a post-game interview with reporters, in which Matthews blamed the result on the team having played “too safe.”

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    “It’s a fâ€"ing horrific narrative,” Keefe tells Dubas. “That’s not why we played poorly. We played safe? Are you fâ€"ing kidding me? We played poorly, because Edmonton played safe. They had five people above us the whole fucking game. And we didn’t want to work hard to fâ€"ing find offence. Go back and watch the game. Every time we fâ€"ing touched the puck, Edmonton had four or five people above us. Every time.”

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    It’s a revealing â€" if not foreboding â€" moment.

    It not only shows the disconnect between how the players and the coaching staff viewed the game, but it also hints at what’s to come later in the year, when a Leafs team that wasn’t willing to work hard for its offensive opportunities ultimately blew a 3-1 series lead to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs.

    At the same time, it tells you everything you need to know about why Keefe was rewarded with a two-year extension following that epic collapse.

    You can blame injuries to John Tavares and Jake Muzzin or a snakebitten Mitch Marner for why the Leafs weren’t able to get over the hump last year. But don’t blame Keefe. It turns out he wasn’t the problem.

    If anything, he tried to warn the players early and often of where they were heading if they stayed on this road of complacency and relying on talent and skill to win games.

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    Over and over again, Keefe stressed the importance of playing with urgency and desperation. Like Mike Babcock before him, Keefe tried to get the team to play the so-called right way, a difficult task for a team that never really faced any adversity during a regular season that they practically dominated from beginning to end.

    “It’s my job as a head coach to get us focused and re-focused,” Keefe tells the cameras in the first episode. “I’m looking at things beyond the regular season and beyond what we’re going through in that one particular game. I’m focused on building the necessary habits to win a Stanley Cup.”

    In another scene, Keefe outlines to the players what he considers to be the four pillars of a Stanley Cup-winning team: Competitiveness, physicality, structure and consistency. Absent amongst the list are talent or creativity.

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    That has been the big misconception with Keefe, who we learn more about in this docuseries than we did in the past two years of watching him guide the Leafs. It turns out he isn’t the anti-Babcock, as he might have been positioned as when he first took over as head coach midway through the 2019-20 season. If anything, he has more in common with Babcock than we might have previously believed.

    Keefe wants offence and goals and big, blowout wins. But he’s more concerned with the process than the end result.

    No matter how talented the Leafs are â€" and we’re talking about a team that had the leading goal-scorer last year, as well as three players who finished amongst the top-25 in points â€" Keefe reminds everyone that there is no substitute for hard work, whether it’s winning puck battles or being first on the forecheck. It’s not about playing safe or not playing safe. It’s about wanting it more than the other guy.

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    That’s why he was so frustrated following that early loss to Edmonton.

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    This had been a game that was hyped up as a battle between Matthews and Connor McDavid. And while the narrative was about how Toronto had played too safe, in fear of being burned by one of the best players in the game, Keefe knew there was something far more dangerous bubbling beneath the surface.

    A mindset of complacency was forming, something Dubas advised Keefe to nip in the bud before it spread, first by talking to Matthews and then to the rest of the team.

    “What I saw is a team in Edmonton that comes into the game desperate for a win,” Keefe says to the players, who clearly weren’t paying enough attention at the time. “They come in with a ton of urgency to play against us. And what we saw last night, we have to be comfortable with.”

    Against Montreal in the playoffs, Toronto could not match that urgency. The Leafs blew the series not because they weren’t good enough to win or because they were too safe. No, they blew it for the same reason they lost to the Oilers in an otherwise meaningless game at the beginning of the season.

    At least now, Keefe has more than enough documentary footage of how to avoid it from happening again.

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