Very good game… Impressed with a couple of plays he made where he challenged defensemen and beat them
Craig Berube addressed the media after his team’s 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, which dropped the Maple Leafs’ record to 27-27-11.
On the team’s performance:
[The Canadiens] definitely had the play in the first. They had the puck. We didn’t check it off them, and when we did, we didn’t do anything with the puck. We didn’t get up the ice as a five-man unit and create anything. We had five shots on net and a couple of chances, but not enough. We got a tough bounce on the second goal.
The second period was a good period. In the third, we took two penalties that killed our momentum a little bit. We didn’t get going after that.
On Bo Groulx’s performance (14:13, two SOG):
I thought he played a very good game.
I was very happy with him, [Quillan], and Cowboy. They all played well tonight.
This rink can be a pretty hostile environment and tough to play in, but I thought all three of them were very good tonight.
In the minors, [Groulx] has put up some really good numbers. I was pretty impressed with a couple of plays he made tonight. He challenged defensemen and beat them. He had a couple of good scoring chances.
On the difficulty of containing the Habs’ speed off the backend:
We didn’t do a very good job in the first period, for sure. They outskated us and had the play in the first period.
We did a much better job in the second period and got ourselves back in the game.
We just need more. Going out for the third period, we just need more of a push from a lot of guys.
On why a 60-minute effort is so hard to come by:
It’s hard to say. It is hard to win in this league if you don’t get it. You don’t have to dominate a period, but you have to be in the game. You have to create and defend. Throughout this stretch, there is a lot of good hockey, but then there is that stretch — whether a period or a 10-minute stretch in a period — where these teams score two or three goals on us.
Right now, we can’t find the back of the net enough. When that is going on, you have to keep the puck out of the back of the net as much as possible. Hopefully, we find our groove with scoring, but we need more guys to dig in and contribute than there are right now.
