Editor’s note: This interview was originally published on Dec. 10. On Thursday, Sheldon Keefe will coach in Toronto for the first time since joining the New Jersey Devils.
NEWARK, N.J. — The slogan that lines the dressing room wall of Sheldon Keefe’s New Jersey Devils team reads: Compete. Commit. Connect.
So far, so good. Keefe has the Devils right near the top of the league in the early going this season, on pace for a 23-point improvement on last season.
In some ways, life is completely different here for the former Leafs coach. The microscope, for one thing, is nothing like the one he left in Toronto. (Most of the handful of media covering Monday’s practice work for the Devils.) In other ways, it’s quite similar.
Keefe got into some of the details of his new life with the Devils, as well as the one he left behind with the Leafs, during a half-hour sit-down with The Athletic on Monday. “I look back to my time in Toronto as hard to compute, quite honestly,” he said.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When was the moment when you realized this was different than Toronto?
It’s just the media interactions are probably the biggest thing.
Otherwise, it’s hockey, it’s the NHL. Actually, there’s way more similarities than there are differences, I guess, is what I would say.
What’s similar?
The challenges are the same on a daily basis. The opponents are the same. The routines are generally all the same. Yeah, there’s way more similarities than differences. And that’s probably the biggest surprise, because I come in thinking it’s going to be dramatically different. But it doesn’t feel that way.
But there has to be an effect of coaching outside of a pressure cooker like Toronto where literally every little thing you do, you say, the team does, is picked apart.
That’s what I’m saying. If there was a big difference I would say it’s the media interactions. But I like to think that I coach to a high standard and expect a lot of myself and expect a lot of our team. Whether I was coaching the Marlies, or coaching in the OHL, or coaching in little Pembroke, Ontario, I’ve always felt pressure. That’s internal for me. But yeah, it is different because you feel you can just push past anything that comes a lot quicker. And I think that’s partially the media, partially the fans and the expectations and the pressure. Partially just — there’s less baggage. You can just move on.
How do you think you’re a different coach now from when you started with the Leafs?
I know the league so much better now and believe I have a far greater understanding through experience of how to succeed in the league and what’s required to win in the league.
What have you learned with that specifically?
You know how hard it is, first of all, and how high of a standard that is required on a daily basis to be an elite team. And I believe we were an elite team in Toronto, playoff success aside. I think about this team I’m coming to here, this organization would do a lot to be in the playoffs every year and be competing, to have those opportunities. So you take some of that for granted with just how hard the league is.
Sheldon Keefe has the Devils off to a 18-10-2 start in his first season. (Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
If you go back to my opening press conference when I got hired mid-season in Toronto, I talked about the same things I talk about now today, the same things we talked about day one of training camp here: ‘There’s a level of competitiveness, physicality, and structure that are required. No matter who you are or how skilled you are, you have to be competitive, you have to be physical, and you’ve got to play with structure. And then you gotta do that consistently.’
I just think I have a far greater understanding of just how unrelenting that needs to be. You can’t take days off. You can’t take games off. And when you do, you better bounce back. And all these things have to be absolutely ingrained in who you are, so that when it gets hardest you can persevere and push through.
You obviously coached a lot of young stars in Toronto. Is there something you learned about coaching those types of players that you’ve transferred to the Jack Hughes types?
I think first of all, when it comes to someone like Jack, I think the fact that I have coached those players who he respects greatly has helped give (me) the credibility. (Jack has) been really engaged. He asks a lot of questions. He’s very much a hockey guy, and is so intrigued about hockey in general, about our team in Toronto and those players. We’ve talked about it. I’ve used some of those guys as examples with him on the defensive stuff, puck battles, winning the puck back in order to stay on offence, things that I think those guys in Toronto are just so elite at.
But then you get in front of a guy, you’ve got to build that relationship now. You’ve got to earn that. You’ve got to make sure you’re giving him reason to respect you after you’re done talking to him. I think it’s been a really good back-and-forth between us. Similar with Nico (Hischier) and Jesper Bratt, Timo Meier. I think I’ve been able to have really good conversations and (it’s) very similar. They want to be really good. They want to be put in positions to succeed. They want answers when things aren’t going well. They want you to help them find solutions. I think they all want to be pushed.
And the guys in Toronto are no different. Auston (Matthews), when he’s not playing well, he wants to know and he wants to know why. Willy (Nylander), he wanted to be pushed. Mitch (Marner) wants to know, he wants answers, he wants solutions. John (Tavares), the same way. These guys want to do very, very well.
It’s different faces and names. A lot of what you’re dealing with on a daily basis is pretty similar.
So will you bring up specifics, like Mitch does this defensively with his stick, or I don’t know, Auston does this, with Nico or Jack? Can you use specifics that way?
If you go back to training camp as an example, and pre-training camp, any of the meetings I would have with players — at that point in time, I’m really only going off of Leafs video, because that’s what I know, and that’s my coaching in action. So you’re using a lot of those examples through that, and then you’re trying to compare it to some of the Devils stuff, and showing the difference.
To me, those guys in Toronto, they don’t get nearly enough credit for how hard they work. These guys, they play a lot and they compete at a very high level. I showed some of the clips to our coaching staff in the summer, of the Toronto guys. Maybe you don’t think of them that way or they’re not perceived that way. And then you watch it. I was able to put together a training camp package that our team in Toronto looked really, really good. And if we could get our group here looking like that I’d be real happy. That’s a lot of what I’m teaching and coaching each day is to try to get to that.
Sheldon Keefe coached for four and a half seasons in Toronto. (Isaiah J. Downing / USA TODAY Sports)
I look back to my time in Toronto as hard to compute, quite honestly. Because we were one way in the regular season. At times, we scored a lot. At times, (we) didn’t defend nearly well enough; at times, (we) did. I think we don’t get enough credit for defending like we did. And then we get into the playoffs and I don’t think defending was ever really an issue. We couldn’t score. That part of it is difficult. But it’s just a reminder for me of how hard we need to push to be able to learn to score in different ways in the regular season (with the Devils). So no matter what we approach in the playoffs, we can deal with it.
But yeah, that was one of the things. We talk a lot in Toronto about trying to be better defensively. I don’t think that’s ever why we lost in the playoffs. You look back at all these Game 7s and all these series that we could have won before getting to Game 7, the number of opportunities we have to score goals or not being able to generate enough. That’s the big reason why we lost. And that doesn’t necessarily jive with the perception of the team, say, in the regular season.
I wondered if there’s something you took away from that experience and that divergence that you’re trying to implement here.
What I’m trying to implement here is you need to be really proficient in everything. The best teams, to me, are proficient in everything. You look at Florida, just won the Cup, Colorado won the Cup, Tampa when they were winning — these teams were really proficient at everything. They had good goaltending. Good on special teams. And they’re good at five-on-five, at both scoring and keeping it away from their net. That’s what we’re trying to do. And I think we’re on our way to that.
I come in every day and I’ve got a long list of things we want to get better at and we want to fix here in New Jersey. But then sometimes I step back, and you get all sorts of reports, and you look at where we’re at in the league. You want to be top 10 in as many categories as you can. Goals for, we’re in top 10. Goals against, we’re in top 10. Power play. Penalty kill, we’ve been hovering there. Goaltending, as a tandem. Our expected goals is strong both ways. Even on the physical side, which we want to get better at, we’re right at the top of the league in hits, we’re top of the league in fighting majors.
We’re doing a lot of good things, in a lot of good areas. And I still think we haven’t even scratched the surface of being the consistent team that I would like us to be. So that’s exciting about the potential. And part of why I was excited to come here is I believe there was a lot of potential in the group. But it’s a reminder for me, because I come in every day, ‘S—, we’ve got a lot of things we gotta get better at.’ And then you look around and you see the league is hard. Everybody’s fighting all of these things on a daily basis.
Does that characterization of what happened in Toronto bug you at all? That it was defence that held the team back.
You look back, you watch that Boston series (in 2024), we played very well defensively. We played very hard. We were right there, even with no Auston or no Willy. Even (Bobby) McMann was a big loss for us. I thought we were right there, could have won that series. This Montreal series that we lost (in 2021). I look back at that and I remember going back through it. We lost two games in overtime when we had them facing elimination. We had 15 two-on-ones in that series, and 11 of them came in our four losses, and we scored on zero.
Which is almost impossible to do.
So it’s like, we score on a couple of those, the series is over, and then who knows what happens from there. But it’s little things like that. We gotta be able to come through in big moments and condition yourself to do so. Clearly, I didn’t do a good enough job of that.
But I do think our group pulled together and defended hard when we needed to. There were certainly times when we didn’t do it enough in the regular season. But there’s also times when we did it extremely well and we made a lot of gains in that area. Sometimes, we dealt with a lot of stuff on the back end. We dealt with some stuff in goal that affected us.
I guess the biggest thing that I took away with it — I guess how quickly my phone rang when I got fired. And in such a great opportunity to come here was reassuring to me, especially with people that I had no existing relationships with whatsoever.
They could kinda see beyond the BS.
You don’t know how that’s going to be perceived. I had never been hired by anybody not named Kyle Dubas before.
Do you still watch the Leafs?
Very little. I’ve watched a couple games here and there. I don’t watch a ton of NHL hockey, to be honest, because we’re busy enough as it is. But I follow the league close enough. Probably more from a statistical and analytical standpoint, it’s a lot easier to look at a few things and get a sense of who’s who and what’s what. In terms of actually watching games, I was back in Toronto with my family a couple weeks ago, I think it was, and I watched a game with my son. So that was my first time of watching a Leaf game with my kid.
Was that weird?
As bizarre as it sounds, you talk about some of the differences and changes. Even the colours. Computing the colours. Nine years of blue and white. And then you come here with the red. When you’re watching the TV and if you’re coaching against them, you’re just used to seeing it so much. And like I said, I watched so much Leafs video over the summer to prepare for training camp. Little things like that just are a little different. When you’re so used to being in it and now you’re on the outside of it.
I’ve been watching your team a bit this year, and even watching practice today. The lineup seems built for you, like it seems to align. And that made me think of MLSE CEO Keith Pelley, who said the chemistry wasn’t quite right between you and management last year. I wondered how different that is this year, just with the team that you have and the style that you want to play.
I’ve never had a real conversation with Keith Pelley before, so I don’t know what that is. I spent hours and hours with (Brad). I was surprised that I was back (as Leafs coach) a year ago.
I guess you were in limbo for quite a while.
Probably nobody in the organization there knows me better than Brendan Shanahan, who worked so closely with me and with everything from “Blueprint” or the Amazon show, has probably watched hundreds of hours behind the scenes of me working, and probably knows me better than anybody in hockey; (he) decided to keep me around.
(Top photo: John E. Sokolowski / USA TODAY Sports)
