It was eight weeks ago Wednesday that Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan descended an ornate stairwell at a posh Scottsdale resort and explained his reasons for firing Mike Babcock.

“We’re mistake-prone on defence. The attention to details aren’t there,” he said. “And even the offence … the explosive offensive team we were known as has been missing for a while now.”

Eight weeks and 24 games later — well, hey, at least the offence has been rescued from its slide into a Babcock-era slumber. With head coach Sheldon Keefe fully invested in the speed-and-skill-based vision of roster architect Kyle Dubas, Toronto’s NHL team heads into Thursday night’s home game against the Calgary Flames as the highest-scoring team in the league since Keefe took the reins. They’re averaging 4.17 goals a game — more than a goal a game above what they were managing under Babcock and more than half a goal a game ahead of the next-highest-scoring NHL team over that span.

But as for attending to the details of that mistake-prone defence?

“That has been the greatest challenge,” Keefe said Wednesday.

In their most recent 10 games, the Maple Leafs have given up a league-worst four goals a game. That explains why there’s plenty of chatter about the necessity of adding some experience to the blue line, especially in light of this week’s news that No. 1 defenceman Morgan Rielly is expected to be out for at least eight weeks with a broken foot. It also explains why Keefe spent considerable time and energy before and during Wednesday’s practice discussing the various ways they might strengthen this particular organizational weakness.

“We’ve made a lot of strides offensively and I think that puts our team in a better spot. There’s benefits defensively just from that because of how much more we’ve had the puck. We’ve spent a lot more time in the offensive zone. That’s really helped,” Keefe said.

That’s the first thing you notice with Keefe: When he talks about defence, he likes to begin by talking about offence. This is a guy who understands that talking to the media is essentially another way of sending messages to his players. And the Babcock era established his players’ tolerance for earnest sermons on the necessity of all-in 200-foot devotion.

As defenceman Cody Ceci was explaining on Wednesday, achieving buy-in on defensive details is an ongoing process — and one that’s not without potential pitfalls.

“We’re still trying to eliminate the stuff we’re giving up — that’ll be the next step going into the end of the year and hopefully the playoffs,” Ceci said. “But you don’t want to bore the skill guys, either. (If you play too defensively) they can fall into a lull like they’re not accomplishing much.”

You don’t want to bore the skill guys: Words to live by if you’re the Leafs coach. Still, there is a laundry list of annoyingly persistent defensive problems, of apathetic fly-bys and over-ambitious pinches and gambles gone awry. Ceci, asked Wednesday to distil the gamut into a few sentences, chalked it up to an offence-loving team that occasionally loses sight of its defensive fundamentals.

“We’re just giving up too much off the rush,” Ceci said. “We don’t have a high forward, the D are jumping into the play. We get a little too excited. And we give up way too much.”

Indeed, for the deluge of goals that have rained on opposing netminders, No. 1 goaltender Frederik Andersen has, on Toronto’s worst nights, found himself swimming in a sea of dangerous chances. And the Leafs, when they haven’t outscored their deficiencies, have ended up on the losing end of four of their past eight games.

“It’s not just a product of how we’re playing here now,” Keefe said. “We think some of these things have been an issue for quite some time with some of our players, and we’ve got to find a way to break that. We actually had a meeting about that type of stuff this morning with our leadership group — just taking that next step as a team.”

After Sunday’s dismal 8-4 loss in Florida capped a three-game losing streak, there were positive signs in Tuesday’s 7-4 win over the Devils. One particular play of interest to Keefe was the sequence that led to the second of Auston Matthews’s three goals. On the surface, it was meaningless stuff, an early third-period marker that made it 6-1 Toronto.

But how it was scored was instructive. As the Devils threatened in the Toronto zone, all five Leafs tracked back diligently. When a New Jersey turnover ended up on Mitch Marner’s stick around the dots, a quick pass to a surging Zach Hyman led to an easy breakout. Hyman’s hard rush into the Devils’ end led to a successful zone entry and a smart pass to the trailing Marner. And a short moment later Marner found Matthews net-side for a teed-up one-timer.

On Wednesday, as Keefe continued the project of teaching the finer points of defence, it was a prominent sequence in the team’s various prepractice video sessions.

“We saw that a few times this morning,” defenceman Travis Dermott said.

They saw it because it was a coaching clinic packaged in a punchy video clip even a player with the attention span of a fruit fly could easily digest. They saw it because it underlined how a few seconds of well-played defence can create flashy offence, how paying attention to the mundane details can produce fireworks fit for a highlight reel.

“That goal came off perfect defensive structure,” Andersen said. “They all got a nice touch on the puck, they were in the right spots, they broke out very easy and 10 seconds later it’s in their net.”

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That’s how Keefe wants to sell the merits of good defence to his offence-loving team — as a bringer of joy, not a bummer of a job. And it seems to make sense. Babcock spent four-plus seasons droning on daily about the need to “dig in” and “bear down.” And by the end he’d gone a long way toward sucking the fun out of the game and transforming the dressing room into a salt mine.

Keefe, wisely, is taking a different tack, but it’s an ongoing balancing act. Don’t bore the skill guys, sure. But don’t bury the goaltender, either.

“I think it’s fun hockey. Guys are up there making plays,” Andersen said of the Keefe-era system. “But it comes with some responsibility, too. And guys are getting used to it, too … We’re still striving towards being better and better.”