Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe really didn’t like his players’ performance in Thursday night’s game against the Boston Bruins, and that’s not necessarily because of the 3-2 shootout loss.

At the end of the first period of this matchup between two Atlantic Section powers, Maple Leafs defenseman Timothy Liljegren took a hit from Brad Marchand that many described as vicious. The former left the game and was placed on the long-term injured list on Saturday.

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However, his teammates never went to the Bruins captain to give him a message. For his part, Keefe deeply regretted the lack of reaction from his players following the incident.

“I hated absolutely everything about it,” he said at a news conference Saturday. I approached [la situation]. That’s not what we want to do. Sometimes we have reacted very well in such situations in the past, but it is a question of consistency, so we took care of it.

A big blow?

Ryan Reaves, who was signed by the Queen City team to prevent such a situation, would have liked the chance to be on the ice at the same time as the small Canadian forward, but that wasn’t the case.

“It’s just fortunate that I wasn’t on the ice with him,” the former Vegas Golden Knights said in commentary by David Alter of The Hockey News. Unfortunately they had the latest change so I didn’t get any entry against them. That’s hockey.”

However, the combative striker admitted it was difficult to tell from the bench whether Marchand had acted maliciously.

“I think you can decide what happened depending on the player,” he said. It didn’t seem overly malicious, but it seemed like there was intent behind it.”

The Maple Leafs host the Buffalo Sabers on Saturday evening.