Sheldon Keefe brutalizes his players after loss

There wasn't a whole lot that went right for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night against the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place, dropping a 5-1 decision meaning that they've now dropped six of their last eight contests. It also happened to be the debut of newcomers Sam Lafferty and Jake McCabe, a result that they certainly weren't hoping for. 

And for head coach Sheldon Keefe, he didn't mince words when it came to recapping his team's performance. 

“We just didn’t play with any purpose or intelligence,” a visibly frustrated Keefe lamented afterward in his postgame comments. “It’s just disappointing.

He continued: 

"To me, our opponent tonight was very focused and very committed to playing together to win a game. Our guys started fine, but just the way we started the penalty kill against the number-one power play in the history of NHL… We get our first exit and give it right back to them. We are not serious about winning when that is the case."

"Those are our regular penalty killers. Those are our top people. That is how we started the game. It didn’t get much better from there."

For Keefe, it wasn't so much the performance of the newcomers in the lineup, but the players that had already been wearing the Leaf crest for some time now. 

"It is just disappointing," Keefe said. "We aren’t going to make too much of it with the new guys or anything like that. I thought the new guys played fine here today. It was the guys we regularly count on that weren’t good enough."

The Leafs will have the chance to get back into the win column when they take on the Calgary Flames tonight at the Scotiabank Saddledome. Game time is set for 9:30 PM EST.