{"id":359066,"date":"2025-12-20T01:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T01:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/359066\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T01:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T01:16:09","slug":"has-craig-berube-lost-the-maple-leafs-ask-those-guys-not-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/359066\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Craig Berube lost the Maple Leafs? \u2018Ask those guys, not me\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t know, you\u2019ll have to ask them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t Craig Berube after the Maple Leafs\u2019 ugly Thursday night loss in Washington<\/a>. That was Craig Berube in February 2023, when he was still the head coach of the St. Louis Blues. An overtime loss to the Canucks marked the Blues\u2019 fourth consecutive defeat.<\/p>\n

Berube blasted the Blues, his best players in particular, in almost identical fashion to the way he lambasted the play of the Leafs after their 4-0 loss to the Capitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur best players don\u2019t play with any passion, no emotion and no inspiration at all,\u201d said Berube back in 2023. \u201cThey don\u2019t play inspired hockey. You cannot play in this league without emotion, grit and being inspired. They\u2019re getting paid lots of money, and they\u2019re not doing the job. End of story.\u201d<\/p>\n

He followed up his \u201cyou\u2019ll have to ask them\u201d remark with another stinger: \u201cI guess they don\u2019t care about the team, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Blues losing streak ultimately lasted six games. The team ended up missing the playoffs, and the following December, amid a rough start to the season, Berube was fired.<\/p>\n

Brad Treliving backed Berube in November when there was legitimate reason to consider, and even make, a coaching change.<\/p>\n

What management and ownership should be wondering now is whether Berube has lost the team entirely.<\/p>\n

His comments after the game in Washington were one thing. They hint, strongly, at a divide between coach and players, not to mention a coach who has run out of answers for his team\u2019s poor play.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bad sign when it\u2019s \u201cthose guys,\u201d not \u201cwe\u201d or \u201cus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk those guys, not me,\u201d Berube said.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cTo me, (the Capitals) played with more passion than we did tonight. It looked to me like they had way more urgency in their game, more passion in their game. That\u2019s the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a lethargic performance, certainly.<\/p>\n

And plenty of blame should fall on the players, especially the top ones. However, the coach should also shoulder some of the responsibility. It\u2019s his job to have the group ready to play hard, to have them energized, engaged and in position to dictate play and win.<\/p>\n

If not, why have a coach?<\/p>\n

Sluggish performances like that have been a regular \u2014 and disturbing \u2014 occurrence all season.<\/p>\n

In fact, just three weeks earlier, the Leafs had a similarly dull losing effort to those very same Capitals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the constant lethargy that\u2019s troubling and points to a coach not getting through to his group.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the strategy that\u2019s failing, too.<\/p>\n

The Leafs haven\u2019t controlled games all year. They rank 25th in the NHL in expected goals percentage and 31st of 32 teams in the amount of time spent in the offensive zone at even strength.<\/p>\n

Only the young San Jose Sharks have managed less time in the other team\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Once a jewel of the league, the Leafs\u2019 power play has been a disaster from day one. The Leafs have scored just 12 goals with the man advantage \u2014 22 fewer(!) than the league-leading Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n

Berube and his staff, with Marc Savard chiefly at the controls of the power play, have uncovered no solutions. Not like last season, when a tweak to five forwards got the team charging back to the top of the league after a bumpy start.<\/p>\n

Ultimate responsibility for the power play\u2019s failures falls on the head coach.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s especially concerning is that nothing is changing, not in any meaningful way. The Leafs are playing almost as poorly now as they were in October and November. They have yet to put together any sustained stretch of strong play and are now suddenly struggling to score goals.<\/p>\n

The Leafs have scored only 11 times in their last six games, four of them losses.<\/p>\n

When the goaltending hasn\u2019t been otherworldly, as it was last season, this team has been unable to regularly win games.<\/p>\n

The Leafs are on pace for just 87 points (they had a division-leading 108 last season) and the team\u2019s first absence from the playoffs in a decade. No, they aren\u2019t far out of playoff position, but there\u2019s been little indication that a prolonged run of excellence is coming.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, they aren\u2019t far from the bottom of the Eastern Conference either.<\/p>\n

This roster has flaws, certainly, and injuries \u2014 in goal and on the back end especially \u2014 have been a factor. Top players have struggled, too. Auston Matthews hasn\u2019t performed to expectations. And after fast starts, William Nylander, John Tavares and Matthew Knies have all cooled down. Contributions from depth players have been inconsistent, and defenders like Morgan Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson have wobbled at times.<\/p>\n

The players have to own that. So does the coach.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to argue that Berube is getting the most out of the talent at his disposal.<\/p>\n

Is that because the players aren\u2019t buying what he\u2019s selling any longer? Is it because they can\u2019t execute what he\u2019s selling? Is it because what he\u2019s selling simply doesn\u2019t work, with this roster, in today\u2019s NHL? Is it all of the above?<\/p>\n

Can someone else do better?<\/p>\n

From Keith Pelley, the head of MLSE, to Treliving, the Leafs\u2019 brass should be asking these questions right now and determining whether this season is still salvageable with Berube at the controls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI don\u2019t know, you\u2019ll have to ask them.\u201d That wasn\u2019t Craig Berube after the Maple Leafs\u2019 ugly Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99,1788],"class_list":{"0":"post-359066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}