{"id":294794,"date":"2025-11-20T05:22:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/294794\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T05:22:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:22:22","slug":"the-leafs-disconnect-isnt-just-on-the-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/294794\/","title":{"rendered":"The Leafs\u2019 disconnect isn\u2019t just on the ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Shortly after his boss, Brad Treliving, leaned him back and gave him a long, lingering kiss of death, Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> coach Craig Berube tried to sound relaxed. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was real good energy on the bench tonight,\u201d Berube said. <\/p>\n

Great, because that\u2019s the only place. Everywhere else you can feel things falling apart. <\/p>\n

In a paired couplet of remarkable press conferences on Tuesday, it became clear that Toronto\u2019s general manager and head coach don\u2019t talk to each other.<\/p>\n

Leafs’ GM Treliving wants to see his inconsistent team find a way to connect<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure that words pass between them, but they don\u2019t talk talk. How else would you explain their profound, mutual misunderstanding?<\/p>\n

Treliving was up first. The crux of his message \u2013 the team\u2019s bad and I don\u2019t know why and what the hell am I supposed to do about it because I\u2019m just the guy who hired a lot of them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality in the business is you\u2019re not trading your way out of problems,\u201d the man who gets paid to do trades said. <\/p>\n

That was the fun part. The important part was the kiss of death \u2013 my favourite genre of sports romance. <\/p>\n

The difference between the kiss of life and death is contingency. The kiss of life is, \u2018I 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\u2019t get out of the parking garage.\u2019<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The kiss of death is, \u2018I love this person so much \u2026 but I don\u2019t really get what he\u2019s doing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Treliving did the second thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe fully in Craig and his messaging,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cBut there is a disconnect of them not doing it. It comes back to inconsistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

When this quote was put to Berube a little while later for his thoughts, he got a look that he probably didn\u2019t mean to share with the world and said, \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a disconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is the moment when the Leafs season \u2013 already sliding \u2013 began to spin. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange that in the midst of a crisis, the two men who have the most to lose from it are so out of synch. <\/p>\n

Nylander scores in overtime as Maple Leafs break streak with win over Blues<\/a><\/p>\n

In a good relationship, they\u2019d 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. <\/p>\n

Had the coach delivered the \u2018the reality of the business\u2019 line about trades, it would\u2019ve sounded more sensible than the GM saying it. Maybe they could have work-shopped that together.<\/p>\n

Instead, they publicly disagreed. Not about causes \u2013 neither of them seem to have any idea why the Leafs are suddenly so mediocre. But about next steps, which is worse. <\/p>\n

The other curious thing is the fact that Treliving threw a life preserver at Berube \u2013 though he missed him by 30 feet. <\/p>\n

This works the other way around. Berube\u2019s 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\u2019ve run the show during the Auston Matthews era. <\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: It’s official: the Leafs are bad again<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other side, Treliving is the one who owns the Mitch Marner fiasco. He\u2019s the one who went in the tough-plus-old direction that isn\u2019t working. He\u2019s been here longer, which means he\u2019s failed more often. <\/p>\n

Were I the GM in the same spot, I\u2019d be telling Berube to speak first and reminding him of all those times I brought him a drive-thru coffee without being asked. \u2018Craig, I\u2019m not saying you have to tell people I\u2019m the smartest person you know, but if you were to do that, I\u2019d be touched.\u2019<\/p>\n

Since trades are meaningless, Treliving has only two things to think about right now \u2013 does MLSE supremo Keith Pelley like me? And does his boss, Edward Rogers, know who I am?<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The really bad news is that even the players \u2013 always the last to be told the plane is losing altitude \u2013 have started looking around for their oxygen masks. <\/p>\n

Typically, winning just one game buoys their collective spirit. Too much, arguably. Not on Tuesday after the OT win over St. Louis. <\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Stephen Lorentz, darkly. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Jake McCabe (22) says Tuesday’s overtime win didn’t do much for the team’s morale.Dan Hamilton\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t mean much,\u201d said Jake McCabe. \u201cI mean, we still got a long way to go here, building our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Identity? That\u2019s right-after-the-tank talk. Is that where the Leafs are now?<\/p>\n

If the players think it\u2019s bad one quarter of the way into the season, when they\u2019re four points out of a playoff spot, then it\u2019s worse than that. In this market, sounding defeated is equivalent to being defeated. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s cyclical decline was becoming permanent. Then he landed in Chicago just before a sex assault scandal blew the team apart.<\/p>\n

When a guy like that thinks a big, pressure-relieving win in November \u201cdoesn\u2019t mean much,\u201d he\u2019s speaking from experience. <\/p>\n

All recent Leafs seasons have been similar in their sameness. Things bump along. Not much changes. Hope runs medium to high. <\/p>\n

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\u2019re talking about new beginnings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube yells at his players from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,2922,41,39,42,40,8023],"class_list":{"0":"post-294794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}