Sheldon Keefe fired as Toronto Maple Leafs coach

The Toronto Maple Leafs have fired head coach Shel‐ don Keefe, the team an‐ nounced Thursday.

"Sheldon Keefe has been relieved of his role as head coach," the team said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "The organization will imme‐ diately begin the search for a new head coach."

Keefe's Maple Leafs rou‐ tinely performed well in the regular season, with a 21297-40 record in 349 games.

The team recorded three consecutive 100-point sea‐ sons with Keefe behind the bench, including a teamrecord 115-point season in 2021-22.

The Leafs routinely came up short in the playoffs with

Keefe at the helm however, sporting a single playoff round win against the Tampa Bay Lightning last season, and a 16-21 postseason record overall.

Despite finally getting the organization over a painful playoff hump last spring, when the Leafs advanced to Round 2 for the first time in nearly two decades, Keefe was unable to keep that mo‐ mentum going.

Toronto bowed out in a tepid five games to the Flori‐ da Panthers in the second round in 2023, before Kyle Dubas was fired as general manager less than two weeks later.

That dismissal following a roller-coaster stretch leading to questions about Keefe's future, but new GM Brad Tre‐ living elected to keep the Dubas loyalist after taking the reins, and then inked the coach from Brampton, Ont., to a contract extension through 2025-26.

"Today's decision was dif‐ ficult," Treliving said in a statement. "Sheldon is an ex‐ cellent coach and a great man; however, we deter‐ mined a new voice is needed to help the team push through to reach our ulti‐ mate goal.

"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."

It's unclear what will happen to the team's assis‐ tant coaches. The Leafs said in Thursday's statement that "decisions regarding the re‐ mainder of the coaching staff will follow."

Special teams have been a focal point of the team's play‐ off failures in recent years, and this latest seven-game series against the Boston Bruins was no exception. The Leafs scored a single power play goal in 21 tries against the Bruins, which could call assistant coach Guy Boucher's job into question, as he ran the power play.