‘I’m invested in it’: One year after firing, coach Sheldon Keefe rooting for Leafs to succeed in playoffs
Sheldon Keefe’s homecoming is simultaneously disappointing, joyous and, well, complicated.
No NHL head coach wants to depart the bench by late April, of course. It hurt when his New Jersey Devils fell to the Carolina Hurricanes in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs in just five games last month. Keefe has worked seven playoff rounds as an NHL bench boss with just one career series win to show for it. It was obviously difficult for the Devils to hobble into a playoff series dealing with so many injuries, most notably to superstar scorer Jack Hughes. It wasn’t a satisfying end to Keefe’s first season as their coach.
And yet: it did let him come north after spending all year away from his family. He’s thrilled to be back in Oakville, Ontario, reunited with his wife Jackie and his sons, Landon and Wyatt. When he accepted the Devils job, the Keefes decided it was best for him to go alone. The boys’ lives were far too established at home. It wouldn’t have felt right to uproot them.
“We were very fortunate to spend nine years in the [Toronto Maple Leafs] organization with the Marlies and the Leafs, my boys were 12 and 14 at the time, making that decision, and basically, this is all they’ve ever known,” Keefe told Daily Faceoff earlier this week. “And they’re very lucky to have been in one place for so long, to be as established as they were with school and sports and friends and our network of support that we have here. Obviously I’m from this area as well, growing up in Brampton, and my parents are still in the area. So, while the connections are still here, the proximity of New Jersey being as close as it was, we thought it was a good fit and we could make it work, and that’s exactly how it worked out. Relative to the demands of an NHL schedule, we were able to connect quite a bit and even better and smoother than I thought it might be.”
So the family time in May is special, particularly since the Keefes plan to repeat the process next season, meaning he’ll have to savor his time at home before going solo again for 2025-26. But returning to the Greater Toronto Area also means there’s no escaping the Leafs. They aren’t just the team he coached for five seasons, the team he helped break a 19-year playoff series win drought, the team that fired him a year ago for being unable to push them into a deeper postseason run. They’re also the team he grew up with as a kid, the team his sons passionately still cheer for. Head in the sand after your team is eliminated? No chance. The Keefes remain all-in on following the Leafs as they battle through Round 2 of the playoffs with the Florida Panthers.
“I know how much it means for the community, for the city, for the fans,” Keefe said earlier in the week, when the series was 2-2. “And I wasn’t able to help the team get to where they need to get to, but they’re in a tremendous place right now and playing great hockey. Chief [coach Craig Berube] has them playing extremely well. He has done an incredible job building up their defense and goaltending. I look at myself as invested in it. Nine years coaching the Leafs and the Marlies, and my kids are huge fans. And we’re watching the games, and I feel myself invested in what’s happening and want to see them do well. I have nothing but love and care for so many people in that organization, both as players and staff members. So I want to see them do great. If the Devils are out, they’re the team we’re pulling for, and I want to see them continue to keep going.”
Keefe, then, will never fully detach from the Leafs, even as he coaches a new team. And while it would be natural to assume it was quite a culture shock leaving hockey’s most obsessive market for New Jersey, it wasn’t quite as significant a change as expected.
“To me, there’s way more similarities than there are differences,” he said. “It’s still the NHL, it’s so much of the same schedule and travel, it’s game day, practice day, off day, the routines are the same. And while there are certainly less media obligations, it’s still a very passionate fan base that has high expectations of its team and its coach. And I don’t take that lightly at all.
“It is nice to walk around and maybe you’re not as recognized and able to decompress a little bit easier and get out in the community, but with that said, you let your guard down a little bit and then all of a sudden someone comes up and recognizes you and wants to talk about the game or wish you well or whatever it might be. There’s lots of Devils fans out there, hockey fans in the New Jersey, New York region. There’s still lots of Leaf fans that make their way around to the area as well, so you’re still getting some of that.”
And he’s still experiencing many of the same ups and downs through an NHL season, too. Keefe’s Devils held first place in the Metropolitan Division by early December and sat 24-11-3 on Dec. 27, with Keefe emerging as a Jack Adams Award candidate. But they went 18-22-4 the rest of the way, enduring an endless barrage of injuries. It wasn’t just the Hughes season-ending shoulder ailment, sustained in a March 3 game. Jack’s brother, rising star defenseman Luke, missed the start of the season recovering from his own shoulder injury. Starting goalie Jacob Markstrom sat more than a month with a knee injury. Key defensemen Dougie Hamilton and Jonas Siegenthaler missed significant time for a second consecutive season. Even during Round 1, important Devils contributors kept getting knocked out of the Carolina series, including Luke Hughes again, Brenden Dillon, and Johnathan Kovacevic. And while top scorer Jesper Bratt finished the series, he needs offseason shoulder surgery.
Not that Keefe used the injuries as an excuse. The horrific luck wasn’t unfamiliar to him as an NHL head coach. Last season with Toronto, he reminds Daily Faceoff, he had no William Nylander to open the playoffs; lost Auston Matthews mid-series; and had goaltender Joseph Woll pull out on the day of Game 7 vs. the Boston Bruins. It happens. Keefe cites the Dallas Stars this spring, minus Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson the first couple rounds, and the 2019-20 Tampa Bay Lightning, winning the Cup despite getting all of five shifts from Steven Stamkos, as examples of teams overcoming adversity. And Keefe treated the injuries as a motivational tactic for his Devils players this season.
“You do just talk about it like it’s empowering the group, it’s letting you know that we’re good, we believe in you, we believe you have more to give us,” Keefe said. “Jack takes on lots, as an example. He takes on a lot of responsibility to drive our offense, and he became a tremendous penalty killer for us this season. But now there’s minutes available. And what I know about hockey players is they’re very competitive people who always feel they can take on more and are ready for more. So you embrace that mindset and target some key individuals that you’re going to need more from, and you get at it.”
And in the end, injuries or not, even the healthy version of the Devils weren’t quite where Keefe wanted them to be. He described them as “average” during his end-of-season media availability earlier this month. Following up on those comments with Daily Faceoff, he explained he loved the team’s play up until the holiday break, but he feels they need a lot more consistency and must find the mental toughness to grind through the slumps and injuries that afflict pretty much every team during the season.
“It’s a marathon of sorts, the regular season,” he said. “So to me, it’s the mental and physical conditioning to be able to do it for a long period of time. And that’s where we need to grow. That comes through habits, that comes through repetition, comes through depth, experience, all these sorts of things coming together.”
It’s just one year in the books, often a good one, not a great one, with reason to expect more next season. Keefe is excited to see what comes next in New Jersey. But for now? He can sit back with his sons and let a little bit of Blue and White trickle back into his veins.
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