Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe calls out team offense after OT loss

The good news is that Toronto Maple Leafs superstar forward Auston Matthews has officially returned to the ice, making his season debut earlier tonight at Scotiabank Arena against and playing 22:53 of ice time. 

The bad news is that his team wasn't able to generate any offensive firepower despite the Rocket Richard winner's return, mustering only one goal against the New York Rangers in a 2-1 overtime loss, dropping them to 2-1-1 on the season. Russian forward Artemi Panarin tallied the winning goal in the extra session, while his countryman Igor Shesterkin stopped 40 Leafs shots. 

Only forward Michael Bunting was able to beat Shesterkin for the Leafs, who got 21 saves from goaltender Jack Campbell.

"We haven’t scored enough goals at 5-on-5," Keefe said after the game. "We have a number of players throughout our lineup that we think can break out and the offense can start to come. We aren’t there yet, obviously. That was the difference tonight."

However, Keefe isn't going to let two consecutive strong performances in net against his team weigh them down. 

"Getting frustrated is a waste of time," he said. "It is a useless emotion for us, especially in this early going. We have to be encouraged by the fact that we are generating as many looks as we are. Today was probably the most that we have generated in the games thus far. It didn’t go in for us. We were all over it. The goalie was good."

"I still think there are some things we can do differently and better to make it harder on the goaltender, but we generated more than enough offense to win the game today, and we didn’t because we didn’t get it over the line. That is the name of the game."

Meanwhile, Matthews receiving nearly 23 minutes of ice time wasn't a difficult decision for Keefe. 

"I spoke to Auston this morning," Keefe explained.  "I told him my intention was to play him as I normally would. I think his feedback was that he expected no less. That was what we did. We obviously had some really long power plays that got his minutes up there really quickly, and then he probably could have done without over time."

"I think it is good for him to go through that. We don’t play again until Friday. I think it was the right way to go about it — to keep putting him out there and have him push through that. I thought he was very effective throughout the game despite the fact that, naturally, it would be a challenging night for him from a conditioning perspective."

Tonight also marked the first United States based opponent for the Leafs since August of 2020 against the Columbus Blue Jackets.