"There's a lot of things that happened that you look back on," he said. "Everyone will say you should have called a timeout, you should have did this, you should have did that. ... There are always some things that you look back at and think maybe I could have done something different, but you can't change what happened."
"Sometimes it's on the players," he said. "Sometimes the players, especially young players, have to go through those situations, and they've gotta be the ones that are gonna make the difference out there."
"If there was one thing that I could say was a mistake that I made in that situation, it's that we weren't aggressive enough," he said. "We sat back. And that was the one thing I'm very, very sorry about. We weren't aggressive. Specifically off an opening draw to send two men off the forecheck, no, we only sent one."
The 2013 Game 7 saw Toronto surrender a 4-1 lead to Boston after the team sat back instead of sustaining an aggressive forecheck. The loss highlighted that responsibility can fall on players, and that young players must sometimes endure adverse situations to develop the ability to change a game's momentum. A clear tactical error was failing to send two men on the opening forecheck after a draw; only one was sent. The lack of bite has long hurt playoff performance, and current management is prioritizing adding greater physicality and aggression.
Read at TheLeafsNation
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]