O'Reilly appears to call out Sheldon Keefe's lack of adjustments against Florida
Minus a broken finger that held him out of the lineup for a month after coming over from St. Louis, Ryan O'Reilly seemed to fit in seamlessly in the Leafs' top-six. He had 11 points in 13 regular season games while mostly skating on a line with John Tavares and Mitch Marner. Unfortunately, that line was non-existent during the playoffs as Sheldon Keefe preferred to have O'Reilly drive the third line rather than load up the second line when needed.
There were plenty of things that went wrong in the Leafs' series against Florida. Even the players felt it. That much was clear when O'Reilly appeared on TSN's OverDrive yesterday and seemingly called out Sheldon Keefe's lack of adjustments against Florida.
"We kind of dug ourselves a hole quick and didn't respondThere's so many things we could have done differently. It's frustrating. We could have gave that series a better chance. That's just the way the game goes sometimes. When you get into these moments where it's challenging, you have to find a way to pull something out of each other and find a way to give a bit more. Against Tampa, we did that.. again - there's so many things we could have done different." - O'Reilly on the Leafs' flawed strategy against the Panthers
O'Reilly didn't get into any of the specifics on what, exactly, the team could have done differently, or if there were other strategies that may have worked better against a fast, physical Florida team. Either way, you can tell that whatever the Leafs tried, it irked him and other players that the game plan failed. Yes, it's on the Core 4 for not scoring in the most important games, but it also falls on the coach for not identifying inefficiencies and adjusting the game plan.
| POLL | ||
JUIN 8 | 225 ANSWERS O'Reilly appears to call out Sheldon Keefe's lack of adjustments against Florida Who do you put most of the blame on for the Leafs' series loss against Florida? | ||
| The players | 61 | 27.1 % |
| The coach | 68 | 30.2 % |
| The GM | 7 | 3.1 % |
| There's plenty of blame to go around | 89 | 39.6 % |
| List of polls | ||
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