{"id":517314,"date":"2026-03-11T15:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T15:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/517314\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T15:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T15:56:07","slug":"its-time-for-the-maple-leafs-to-finally-make-a-coaching-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/517314\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time for the Maple Leafs to finally make a coaching change"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 18-wheeler has, once again, gone over the cliff<\/a>. It continues to smolder at the bottom of the crater, with 17 games somehow still to go in this truly disastrous season.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost again on Tuesday night. It was their eighth consecutive loss, marking only the 12th time in franchise history they\u2019ve strung that many Ls together. It certainly feels likely they will challenge for the record of 11 set during the horror show that was the Peter Horachek year in 2014-15, with their next five games all against playoff-bound clubs.<\/p>\n

But this has really been a season-long skid, a one-of-a-kind plummet into the NHL basement that\u2019s one of the more pronounced free-falls in the salary-cap era. After a 108-point campaign a year ago, the fourth-best record in the league, the Leafs are now nearing the floor, playing at an 82-point pace \u2014 seventh worst in the NHL \u2014 and sinking fast.<\/p>\n

The Leafs were nearly run out of the rink in the first period of Tuesday\u2019s game, getting outshot 18-5 in the first 20 minutes in what ultimately turned into a 3-1 win for the Montreal Canadiens. It says something that this performance stands as one of Toronto\u2019s better outings of late, given how one-sided and ugly it was for long stretches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not how we want to play,\u201d Leafs veteran William Nylander said. \u201cWe want to play a full game of good hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there was a silver lining in the game, it was that some of the Leafs\u2019 younger players finally received an opportunity. Rookie Easton Cowan was excellent in more than 18 minutes of ice time and made a nifty play setting up Toronto\u2019s lone goal. Marlies callup Bo Groulx played more than 14 minutes in his Toronto debut and brought noticeable energy. Jacob Quillan \u2026 well, he at least dressed, albeit in just eight minutes.<\/p>\n

For a team that was benching Cowan and playing its uninspired vets on the same lines in the same roles night after night only a few games ago, this counted as progress.<\/p>\n

The architects of this mess in Toronto are many. And there\u2019s no question many of the failings come back to the fact the roster is poorly constructed. This is an old, slow team that is getting outskated every game, a dramatic transformation from not all that long ago when the Leafs were one of the higher-scoring, most skilled groups year after year.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to head coach Craig Berube.<\/p>\n

Hired with great fanfare two years ago, five years removed from winning the Stanley Cup in St. Louis, he was heralded as a hard-nosed answer to what had ailed the Leafs in the playoffs. He was given immense sway in the organization, including influence over roster decisions, and endorsed a push for more size and less finesse throughout the lineup. Tactically, Berube advocated for a dump-and-chase style \u2014 attempting to emulate the Florida Panthers \u2014 and embraced a pack-the-front-of-the-net mentality on defense.<\/p>\n

All of it has been an unmitigated disaster this season. The Leafs are the second-worst puck possession team and third-worst in goals against in the league. They\u2019ve allowed the highest rate of both shots and shot attempts at even strength and conceded scoring chances more frequently than all but three other teams. Their offense, meanwhile, has somehow sunk below league average, falling from seventh to 17th (with a 21st-ranked power play) while generating just 27 shots per game.<\/p>\n

This is a team that has lacked an identity all season, other than serving as cannon fodder for most of the rest of the league. And it\u2019s glaring how few answers Berube has had, beyond outright blaming his players for some failings that are clearly tactical.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk those guys, not me,\u201d he answered after one particularly awful loss in mid-December, when his job \u2014 and the Leafs\u2019 season \u2014 seemed to hang in the balance.<\/p>\n

If there was going to be an attempt to save this, if that was even possible, that was the moment a coaching change was needed. But with the Leafs having piled up a good record last year \u2014 one heavily built<\/a> on PDO and a ton of one-goal wins \u2014 and Berube having 2 1\/2 years remaining on his pricey contract, GM Brad Treliving was reluctant to pull the trigger on what would have been the NHL\u2019s first coach firing of the season.<\/p>\n

Twenty losses later, all we\u2019re left with is the blame game. And it\u2019s clear both men deserve the bulk of it.<\/p>\n

While Treliving\u2019s future remains somewhat murky given ownership\u2019s role there, Berube\u2019s does not. It\u2019s impossible he\u2019ll survive this debacle, not with how many losses they\u2019ve piled up and how checked out both he and the players look every night.<\/p>\n

The only question is when it happens.<\/p>\n

The best argument you can make for keeping Berube, with 17 games to go, is that he\u2019s doing a fine job of being a tank commander<\/a>. The Leafs\u2019 lottery odds have risen steadily during this slide, to the point that they have a 13.2 percent chance of earning a top-two pick as of this writing. If they continue to play this poorly the rest of the way, it\u2019s possible they could sink to fourth or fifth from last, boosting their odds of a top-five pick to as high as 79.5 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s understandable if some portions of the fan base want to embrace this farce, watching their team limp along for another five weeks. But it\u2019s worth asking if there\u2019s a better way to achieve the same end result.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe that if you fire Berube and put one of his assistants \u2014 Derek Lalonde or Mike Van Ryn \u2014 in charge, this team is going to suddenly transform into a juggernaut and start winning games. But what it will allow for is the organization to get on the same page and start planning for next season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to shut down some of the veterans<\/a> and play the kids more, instead of pulling Quillan away from an AHL playoff race to watch an NHL team play like an AHL one from the bench. Stick Cowan with Auston Matthews to see if there\u2019s a possible fit there rather than saddling the captain with Max Domi again and again. Call up a young defenseman and dress him over the same sad six we\u2019ve watched all year. Identify which players you think can help this team in a retool next season and give them more opportunity. Bench those whose time is up.<\/p>\n

You can be bad with a purpose in the NHL. The Boston Bruins managed it to great effect<\/a> a year ago with an interim coach behind the bench, landed a high pick and appear headed back to the playoffs this season. But what the Leafs are doing right now isn\u2019t purposeful; it\u2019s downright self-destructive.<\/p>\n

Credit to some of the Leafs players who have adopted the mindset that this is one miserable year, the type that other good teams, such as the Tampa Bay Lightning, have had and rebounded. The whole organization needs to start living that message, and one of the ways to do that is to turn the page on what\u2019s become a sideshow behind the bench.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 18-wheeler has, once again, gone over the cliff. It continues to smolder at the bottom of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,1767,99,1788],"class_list":["post-517314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-opinion","tag-sports","tag-toronto-maple-leafs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517314","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=517314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}