For the first time in nearly a decade, Craig Berube doesn’t have an NHL team to coach. He does have a few things to say about the last one.
Berube was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs at the end of a 32-36-14 season that left them bottom of the Atlantic Division and out of the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Much of the blame landed on how he used Auston Matthews, who managed 27 goals and 26 assists in 60 games, both career lows, in a year disrupted by injuries including a torn MCL after a hit from Radko Gudas in March.
Speaking to TSN 1050’s First Up, Berube didn’t retreat an inch.
“I was trying to instill a 200-foot game for everybody. And if that meant he had to take more D-zone draws than he normally does because he’s playing against top lines, well, that was my thought process on it. And, you know, I stick by my guns,” Berube said.
He also pushed back on the idea that Matthews was buried defensively.
“I think your best player, arguably your best player, has to play a 200-foot game and he’s going to have to play in the D-zone at times and take faceoffs in the defensive zone. But if you look at it, he got a lot of offensive zone starts too,” Berube said. “I think last year I probably gave him more than any other player on our team, him or William Nylander.”
Did Berube tell the Leafs to dump the puck?
The second line of criticism came from inside the room. A recent Daily Faceoff piece reported that multiple Toronto wingers said Berube instructed them to dump the puck in, and that they often feared reprisal for trying creative plays at the offensive blue line. He didn’t deny the instruction.
“I had an identity going in there and I wanted to play a more north-south game and put pucks behind teams and forecheck. I believe that is a way to win in this game. You look at Carolina and Florida, even when we won in 2019, we didn’t turn pucks over,” Berube said.
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He then addressed the players directly, without much warmth.
“I wasn’t trying to take their sticks out of their hands, but hey, that’s the way it goes. I got no issue with players saying if they felt like they had to dump every puck in. That’s fine. I’m not going to sit here and comment on that,” he said.
Berube was more generous about Morgan Rielly, another target of criticism after an 11-goal, minus-18 season, predicting a bounce-back year and calling him a great character guy who cares about the club.
As for his own future, the 2019 Stanley Cup winner says he isn’t chasing anything right now, and has spent his time watching games near where he lives. Toronto, meanwhile, opens the season against Montreal under Jim Hiller with Gavin McKenna, Sergei Bobrovsky and a heavily rebuilt roster.
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