Maple Leafs fire coach Sheldon Keefe after first-round playoff exit

The Toronto Maple Leafs fired coach Sheldon Keefe on Thursday, five days after they were eliminated from the playoffs.

The Leafs lost a seven-game first-round series to the Boston Bruins, the fourth time in Keefe’s five postseasons as coach that his team failed to advance beyond the opening round. Nothing will define the Keefe era in Toronto more than that.

“We’re in the results business here and we didn’t get results,” Keefe said Monday in his final news conference with the Leafs. “We haven’t met expectations. And as a head coach, I take responsibility for that.”

Thank you, Leafs Nation 💙✌️ pic.twitter.com/WN4iXJZjjE

— Sheldon Keefe (@SheldonKeefe) May 9, 2024

Keefe seemed to know then that a change might be coming.

“It’s out of my control,” Keefe said when asked about his future. “That decision is out of my control.”

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Toronto fired Keefe one year after general manager Brad Treliving gave him a two-year contract extension. That extension kicks in next season.

“Today’s decision was difficult. Sheldon is an excellent coach and a great man; however, we determined a new voice is needed to help the team push through to reach our ultimate goal,” Treliving said. “We thank Sheldon for his hard work and dedication to the organization over the last nine years, and wish him and his family all the very best.”

Keefe’s teams were perennially among the NHL’s best in the regular season and, in fact, among the best in Leafs history. The 2021-22 Leafs registered a franchise-record 115 points and the 2022-23 team followed that up with 111 points, second all time in the more than 100 years of the franchise. Three of the top five regular-season teams in Leafs history, as ranked by points percentage, were coached by Keefe.

Keefe’s .665 points percentage during the regular season ranks first among all NHL head coaches who have coached at least 300 games.

The hallmark of his teams was offence, but it never translated enough to the postseason.

The Leafs scored a ton before the playoffs in the Keefe years, led by the likes of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares. Toronto led the NHL with 303 goals in the regular season in 2023-24.

But in the playoffs, including against the Bruins this spring, the Leafs struggled to generate enough high-quality opportunities and score. They ended up with only 12 goals in seven games versus Boston. The Leafs scored two or fewer in their final seven games in the 2023 playoffs and had problems at crucial times that way in earlier postseasons.

“I think in each of those playoffs, you look at some of the opportunities missed and you wonder why at times, when you get clean chances, breakaways, two-on-ones, rebounds in tight, those types of things that tend to go in for you during the regular season and now they’re not,” Keefe said earlier this week.

Keefe noted the strong performance of Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman, but added, “my job as a coach is to find more ways” to beat him.

The power play factored into those problems. Except for a first-round series against Tampa last spring, the only playoff round won during Keefe’s time as coach, the Leafs’ power play came up short repeatedly as the stars failed to convert on their chances.

The Leafs went 1-21 on the power play against the Bruins.

“The skill is there,” Keefe said. “But ultimately it comes down to execution, it comes down to competitiveness, to winning little puck battles and winning faceoffs, and then trusting it, staying with it. And that becomes harder to do as that number (of chances missed) starts to grow.”

“Frankly,” Keefe added of the Bruins series, “the power play was good in Game 7, we just didn’t put the puck over the line. Which was the same story in (Games) 2 and 3.”

In firing Keefe, the Leafs decided the coach was at least partly to blame for those ills.

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With that said, the 2023-24 Leafs might have been the least talented of Keefe’s five teams, with a one-dimensional defence, limited two-way depth, and mediocre goaltending.

Only once in the six playoff series under Keefe did the Leafs have the better goaltending.

It wasn’t until Joseph Woll took over for Ilya Samsonov in Game 5 this spring that the Leafs evened the scales in goal with Boston. Woll wasn’t available for Game 7 because of an injury suffered in Game 6.

Keefe was hired in November 2019 by then-general manager Kyle Dubas as a replacement for Mike Babcock. Keefe had guided the Toronto Marlies to a Calder Cup championship in 2018, though he had never coached in the NHL.

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(Photo: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)