Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving doubled down on his support of head coach Craig Berube in the wake of Marc Savard’s dismissal from the coaching staff.
Speaking about two hours before an afternoon game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Treliving said the decision to fire Savard boiled down to a lack of results on the league-worst power play he oversaw.
“Ultimately, we’re all judged by our results,” Treliving said. “I look at that particular area, and I don’t want to just single out the power play, but it’s been an area that, to me, has cost us points in the standings. So it’s gotta be better.”
The Leafs, sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, have scored a league-low 12 power-play goals.
Treliving stressed that the decision to fire Savard, who joined the team as an assistant coach before last season, “is not putting the blame solely at Marc Savard’s feet.
“That’s just totally incorrect,” Treliving said.
”This doesn’t absolve anybody,” the Leafs GM went on. “This is not, we throw somebody out and say, ‘blame this person’. It’s a group responsibility.”
“It was a change that we could make,” he added.
Treliving went out of his way, for the second time in just over a month, to back Berube as coach.
The Leafs have struggled all season under Berube’s watch, with sore spots going well beyond the power play.
“I want to make it clear: I support Craig fully,” Treliving said. “It’s not lost on us where the team’s at. We live it every day. But I think we’ve got a real good coach.”
Treliving said the decision to fire Savard was made in consultation with Berube as well as the management team, but was ultimately his to make.
Berube was plainly unhappy with the way things had transpired.
He called Savard a “good friend.”
‘It’s always hard when you lose somebody and things change,” Berube said. “But we didn’t perform well enough, and it’s ultimately on me.”
On the decision to part ways with Savard, Treliving added, “The PP struggled all year. It wasn’t improving. We didn’t see enough improvement. Obviously, results are what it’s all about, and there definitely wasn’t enough results.”
Treliving stressed that there was no disconnect between himself and Berube.
He then suggested that assistant coach Derek Lalonde would lead the power play for Tuesday’s game against the Penguins, while Berube said instead that it would be a staff effort.
“It’s on everybody,” he said of the power-play’s failures. “It’s on me. I’m the head coach.”
The Leafs will get a boost on the ice against the Penguins as defenseman Chris Tanev will return after a 23-game absence, Berube said. The 35-year-old has missed time this season with both an upper-body injury and a concussion. In just eight games played this season, Tanev has registered two assists.