‘We don’t want to get outworked. Ever.’ How new Leafs coach Craig Berube will change their culture

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube

Credit: May 21, 2024; Toronto, Ontario, CANADA; Toronto Maple Leafs new head coach Craig Berube speaks during an introductory media conference at Ford Performance Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

Craig Berube did smile during Tuesday’s press conference at Ford Performance Centre, in which the Toronto Maple Leafs introduced him as their 32^nd head coach. But it took a while.

As Leafs GM Brad Treliving detailed the process that led to Berube’s hiring, which included interviewing as many as nine candidates following Sheldon Keefe’s firing, Berube was stoic. When Berube introduced himself, his opening statement was brief. It wasn’t until president Brendan Shanahan fielded a questions about fighting Berube during their overlapping playing days that Berube finally broke and flashed his pearly whites.

It felt fitting. This team is out of patience, having gone 1-8 in playoff series during the Auston Matthews/Mitch Marner era. The time for half measures is long over. Shanahan set a tone for impending change when he claimed “everything is on the able” during the team’s year-end presser a couple weeks ago, and Berube, who led the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues to the Stanley Cup, is the no-nonsense face of this new era.

On Tuesday, Treliving spoke of building a “profile” that the team sought in its next coach after firing Keefe, who couldn’t get Toronto to break through in five postseasons. It started with eschewing, as Treliving put it, the idea of “catchy phrases about Core Fours and Fives.” A coach who could instill team-first values was paramount.

“To have success [deep in the playoffs], it’s very difficult, and you’ve got to be able to push people into uncomfortable positions and into uncomfortable things,” Treliving said. “But to me you have to connect with people first. There has to be a partnership, a relationship and a trust. So that was part of the profile. Somebody that can command respect. Presence is an important thing. You either have it or you don’t. Craig has it. And then when you really talk with people around the game, people that I trust, people that I know, his ability to teach, as one former teammate and one former coach said, he’s quietly brilliant. He knows the tactical part of the game.”

The tactical element surely is a prerequisite, but the word that came up half a dozen times in the 25-minute presser: accountability. Even an outsider could assume Berube would add that to a team’s culture given he’s a veteran of more than 1,000 games, an ex-enforcer with more than 3,000 penalty minutes and coach of a recent Stanley Cup winner. But even with those preconceived notions of who he was, the Leafs were even more impressed once they did their diligence.

“The more people you dug into and the more information you got, the feedback was even more positive,” Shanahan said. “It just felt like things like we were hoping for. Thinks we thought were confirmed. Specifically with some of the players we reached out to that have played for him, it was first-liners, it was fourth-liners, it was Canadian guys, it was European guys, players that played different styles and had different backgrounds, and yet they all came back to us with the same message: that he’s a great coach, a great person and as [Treliving] said, ‘I’d go through the wall for the guy.’ ”

I asked Treliving Tuesday if the hiring of Berube indicated that motivation was a problem for Leafs, who always seem to put up a fight in any series but also inexplicably lose their nerve at times, whether it was starting Games 3 and 4 flat at home against Boston or curling up in the fetal position and seemingly waiting for the Bruins to score in the overtime of Game 7. Treliving was quick to refute that idea. He insisted that the Leafs had no motivation deficit, that Keefe is a great coach and better person. But perhaps Berube, the man with a ring, has a superior sense of which buttons to push and when.

“We needed a different delivery, a difference voice giving the delivery, and Craig comes at it a different way,” Treliving said. “I’ve been here a year but I understand, we’ve been here as an organization for a number of years. You’ve got to keep knocking on the door, knocking on the door, and to me you find every different avenue, whether it be from a coaching standpoint, player personnel, tactical, every other way to push through that door. When we started this process we were very fortunate to have somebody of Craig’s ability available. That doesn’t happen all the time. And I just think he’s a great match, a perfect fit for the group where we’re at right now.”

So what will that fit look like, exactly? It’s not a matter of simply turning Berube loose for some rousing speeches, obviously. Their playing style will change, too. We can expect the Leafs to adopt more of a lunchpail mentality as a complement to their considerable skill. Really, that transition began before Berube arrived, with Treliving making this team bigger, stronger and tougher. Against Boston in Round 1, the Leafs were equal to the physical side of the series, dishing out at least as much punishment if not more. When you add the likes of Joel Edmundson, Ilya Lyubushkin, Simon Benoit, Ryan Reaves, Max Domi, Tyler Bertuzzi and more over the course of a year, that’s going to happen. But the Leafs were still ultimately outworked and defeated by a Bruins team that had…Morgan Geekie as its first-line center. The Leafs were meaner in 2023-24 but regressed defensively and underachieved relative to their talent. And perhaps that’s where Berube will help most. He’s arguably never coached a group with more raw ability than this one, and he’ll try to light a spark in them.

“We don’t want to get outworked, ever,” Berube said. “We want to be highly competitive every night. And it’s all about the team for me. That’s one of the things I really focus on, and that’s part of building the team. Everybody’s important, everybody’s got to be used, they all have jobs and roles. We want to play a north game, we want to play fast, we want to be a heavy team. When I talk about heaviness, it’s not running guys through boards and fighting and all that stuff. The game’s changed. But you still have to be strong on pucks, you’ve got to win puck battles. Those are priorities for me.”

So how will Treliving shape this team to meet Berube’s needs as a coach? The Toronto brass wouldn’t tip their hand Tuesday. Matthews and fellow fresh contract extendee William Nylander aren’t going anywhere. But the poster child for failing to fight through when things become more difficult in the playoffs is, of course, Marner. Trading him, which could require him to waive his no-movement clause, could kickstart a rebuild of the team’s culture. Does he stay or go? Toronto’s offseason is off to a busy start, and it is nowhere near done.

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