Sheldon Keefe rips his players after blowing 2-goal lead

The Toronto Maple Leafs appeared to have things well in hand against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena, enjoying a two goal lead over the host New York Islanders. However, a pair of power play goals from the Islanders would flip the script on Toronto.

Both Kyle Palmieri and Bo Horvat scored on the man advantage for the Islanders, while the Leafs were unable to get anything going on theirs. And afterward, head coach Sheldon Keefe didn't mince words in his views of his team's performance.

"Special teams were rotten tonight," Keefe said, per NHL.com. "Our power play, penalty kill, and overtime [were rotten]. That costs you games. Our power play had one chance and did nothing with it.

"It's as bad as we've looked on any power play, and on the penalty kill, the puck's in our net before we could blink to start the game."

For forward Auston Matthews, it simply came down to it being a "game of inches".

"I thought there was a lot of good we did in the game," Matthews said. "They're a good team. They play really well on both sides of the puck. They make it hard on you offensively, so I thought it was pretty back-and-forth. Just a game of inches out there."

The Leafs will be back at it this weekend when they take on the Colorado Avalanche at home.

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