Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube yells at his players from the bench during Tuesday’s game against the St. Louis Blues. The coach disagreed with GM Brad Treliving’s comments on a disconnect between his defencemen and forwards.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Shortly after his boss, Brad Treliving, leaned him back and gave him a long, lingering kiss of death, Toronto Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube tried to sound relaxed.
The Leafs had finally won one, just barely and against a bad team. That bought them a few hours to catch a few Zs and reload before they head back to the front line.
“There was real good energy on the bench tonight,” Berube said.
Great, because that’s the only place. Everywhere else you can feel things falling apart.
In a paired couplet of remarkable press conferences on Tuesday, it became clear that Toronto’s general manager and head coach don’t talk to each other.
Leafs’ GM Treliving wants to see his inconsistent team find a way to connect
I’m sure that words pass between them, but they don’t talk talk. How else would you explain their profound, mutual misunderstanding?
Treliving was up first. The crux of his message – the team’s bad and I don’t know why and what the hell am I supposed to do about it because I’m just the guy who hired a lot of them.
“The reality in the business is you’re not trading your way out of problems,” the man who gets paid to do trades said.
That was the fun part. The important part was the kiss of death – my favourite genre of sports romance.
The difference between the kiss of life and death is contingency. The kiss of life is, ‘I love this person more than my own mother, and if the club fires him, I will splay myself across the hood of his car so that he can’t get out of the parking garage.’
Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving, seen here at a May press conference, said on Tuesday that head coach Craig Berube’s job was safe, but cited a disconnect between players on the ice.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Later, when security is skipping the doorway and throwing the guy you love so much through the plate-glass window at the entrance, you can hide in your office. But people will still say that you tried to help.
The kiss of death is, ‘I love this person so much … but I don’t really get what he’s doing.’
Treliving did the second thing.
“I believe fully in Craig and his messaging,” he told reporters. “But there is a disconnect of them not doing it. It comes back to inconsistency.”
When this quote was put to Berube a little while later for his thoughts, he got a look that he probably didn’t mean to share with the world and said, “I don’t think there’s a disconnect.”
That is the moment when the Leafs season – already sliding – began to spin.
It’s strange that in the midst of a crisis, the two men who have the most to lose from it are so out of synch.
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In a good relationship, they’d have a cohesive message. Slaps and tickles, maybe. Treliving comes out and blasts the team for dragging ass for 20 games, giving the fanbase some satisfaction. Berube then comes out, acknowledges that the GM has a point, but reinforces his faith in the group.
Had the coach delivered the ‘the reality of the business’ line about trades, it would’ve sounded more sensible than the GM saying it. Maybe they could have work-shopped that together.
Instead, they publicly disagreed. Not about causes – neither of them seem to have any idea why the Leafs are suddenly so mediocre. But about next steps, which is worse.
The other curious thing is the fact that Treliving threw a life preserver at Berube – though he missed him by 30 feet.
This works the other way around. Berube’s been on the job for one-and-a-quarter seasons. In his first try, he got more out of the Leafs than the other two guys who’ve run the show during the Auston Matthews era.
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On the other side, Treliving is the one who owns the Mitch Marner fiasco. He’s the one who went in the tough-plus-old direction that isn’t working. He’s been here longer, which means he’s failed more often.
Were I the GM in the same spot, I’d be telling Berube to speak first and reminding him of all those times I brought him a drive-thru coffee without being asked. ‘Craig, I’m not saying you have to tell people I’m the smartest person you know, but if you were to do that, I’d be touched.’
Since trades are meaningless, Treliving has only two things to think about right now – does MLSE supremo Keith Pelley like me? And does his boss, Edward Rogers, know who I am?
If things continue as they have, someone is losing their job. Treliving sees that, and has begun bracing for impact. Berube is still out there talking like NHL coaches are guaranteed at least three years runway per the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The really bad news is that even the players – always the last to be told the plane is losing altitude – have started looking around for their oxygen masks.
Typically, winning just one game buoys their collective spirit. Too much, arguably. Not on Tuesday after the OT win over St. Louis.
“Everyone knows what’s going on,” said Stephen Lorentz, darkly.
Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Jake McCabe (22) says Tuesday’s overtime win didn’t do much for the team’s morale.Dan Hamilton/Reuters
“Doesn’t mean much,” said Jake McCabe. “I mean, we still got a long way to go here, building our identity.”
Identity? That’s right-after-the-tank talk. Is that where the Leafs are now?
If the players think it’s bad one quarter of the way into the season, when they’re four points out of a playoff spot, then it’s worse than that. In this market, sounding defeated is equivalent to being defeated.
Most of these guys have been through some sort of organizational breakdown. McCabe is a special case. He started off in Buffalo, as that franchise’s cyclical decline was becoming permanent. Then he landed in Chicago just before a sex assault scandal blew the team apart.
When a guy like that thinks a big, pressure-relieving win in November “doesn’t mean much,” he’s speaking from experience.
All recent Leafs seasons have been similar in their sameness. Things bump along. Not much changes. Hope runs medium to high.
This one is already different. Exactly how different depends on the next few weeks. Based on the way the Leafs are talking, forget about changes. We’re talking about new beginnings.