The Toronto Maple Leafs fired assistant coach Marc Savard on Monday, a step towards salvaging a disastrous season.<\/p>\n
Savard was in charge of the team\u2019s unsuccessful power play. The former NHL forward was in his second season as Leafs\u2019 assistant coach. He had previously worked with Leafs head coach Craig Berube for the St. Louis Blues, as well as one season as an assistant on the Calgary Flames\u2019 staff.<\/p>\n
Yet with the Leafs in a tailspin and their poor power play one of the major contributors to recent results, Savard\u2019s firing was timely. The Leafs had tried to mix their power-play units, sending John Tavares and William Nylander to the second power-play unit and promoting Nick Robertson. The changes didn\u2019t result in goals, and the Leafs went 0-for-10 on the power play through their most recent ugly three-game road trip.<\/p>\n
Even with the kind of offensive weapons in Auston Matthews, Tavares and Nylander that have previously driven power plays, which ranked at the top of the league, the Leafs\u2019 power play currently sits last in the NHL at 13.3 percent.<\/p>\n
The Leafs\u2019 power play continued to lack creativity and rapid puck movement under Savard this season. It\u2019s worth wondering if the Leafs themselves lost faith in Savard\u2019s direction as they continued to go through the motions with the man advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power play has actually been getting better,\u201d Berube said after the 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals last week, when they went 0-for-5 on the power play for the first time all season. \u201cBut tonight, it was God-awful, in my opinion. The other unit did some good things. They had a couple of opportunities and just misfired, or it didn\u2019t go in. They had a couple of chances. Our top unit didn\u2019t execute, didn\u2019t win any battles when they needed to, and just couldn\u2019t make plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initial plan is not to seek an external replacement for Savard, according to league sources. They\u2019ll move forward with assistants Derek Lalonde and Mike Van Ryn and see how things develop.<\/p>\n
The decision to fire Savard came together quickly on the heels of the aforementioned road trip, in which the Leafs lost all three games by a combined score of 14-4. They are a combined 2-for-27 with the man advantage in December.<\/p>\n
Berube had been loyal to Savard after opting to work with him for a second time. There had been at least one previous conversation where the possibility of firing Savard was raised by Leafs management, according to league sources, but in that instance Berube pushed back against the idea.<\/p>\n
Now, is Savard\u2019s firing the precursor to more moves?<\/p>\n
The questions about Berube\u2019s security have increased rapidly as the losses pile up. Savard\u2019s firing feels like a warning shot to a Leafs team that is mired in its worst stretch since the Auston Matthews era began in 2016-17. They sit in last place in the Atlantic Division and appear likely to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs fired assistant coach Marc Savard on Monday, a step towards salvaging a disastrous season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99,1788],"class_list":{"0":"post-364616","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\/364616","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=364616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}