Craig Berube is baffled by his Maple Leafs at a time when they need answers

Hockey has never been a game that’s leant itself to clean cause-and-effect style analysis. Over my time as a video coach for Sheldon Keefe, he was constantly looking for the “perfect clip,” but they were hard for me to provide. The game is too chaotic, and so you learn to sort of squint and find what an opponent is trying to do rather than finding clean examples of their perfectly executed play.

Here in Toronto, the media landscape is laden with quality game-watchers, from former players to longtime analysts to diehard fans who’ve gotten pretty good at doing exactly what I’m talking about while following every shift. A lot of people out there can see it; Toronto is a good market that way. And with that, by far the most damning thing for Craig Berube right now is how just about everybody, top-to-bottom, is baffled. 

There isn’t just one problem, nor is there just one solution. The problems are many, they’re connected, they’re separate, it’s tough to even know where to start.

It’s impossible to see what the Leafs are trying to do some nights. The viewing collective hasn’t just failed to find simple reasons for why things aren’t going well, they’re finding it hard to even guess. 

They’re baffled how a power play with that much skill is the worst in the league. 

They’re baffled how a 28-year-old Hart Trophy winner can look so entirely average, while the team’s next three best offensive players can be experiencing simultaneous month-long slumps. 

They’re baffled that this team is among the bottom few in O-zone possession time, in slot shots, in cycle chances, in rebound chances.

They’re baffled that the Leafs are bottom few in, honestly, just about every defensive metric Sportlogiq tracks. Expected goals against, slot shots against, rush chances against, cycle chances against … I’ll stop to spare you, because the data is baffling based on where they’ve been not that long ago.

They’ve been a lot of things over this past decade. A possession-dominant team, a power play dynamo, a division champion. Some may say that at times the Leafs have been too skill-focused, maybe not heavy enough, and that maybe they’ve lacked the better goalie in the odd playoff series. 

But they’ve never been flat-out awful, and for the first time in many years, that shoe fits.

Mitch Marner was a very good player and it badly hurt to lose him, but the numbers when he wasn’t on the ice for the Leafs last year (or in years prior) were never even close to as bad as what this collective team has churned out this year. They’ve found gears of struggle well past “they miss Marner.”

And so, every Leafs conversation I have with people these days seems to be about theories, about squinting to find not the perfect reason, but the closest version of what may be going on here. 

Some say Matthews is injured. Or, no, they’ll guess he has some other off-ice problem, or maybe he doesn’t like his coach. He looks tired, doesn’t he?

Throw it at the wall and see what sticks. The goalies are fragile, the defence can’t skate, they need to trade Morgan Rielly, they need to sell, they need to rebuild. I’ve heard it all.

Concerned as fans may be, what’s most troubling is that Craig Berube is baffled too. There’s not a thought listed above that hasn’t gone through his head, I’m sure.

Yet here’s Berube post-game after their 4-0 zombie march to the final buzzer in Washington: “They played with more passion than we did tonight. That’s what it boils down to. It looked to me like they had way more urgency in their game, more passion in their game. That’s the difference.” 

When asked how he could explain that, he quipped, “Ask those guys, not me.”

He’s clearly sick of trying to pick those guys up publicly, and since it hasn’t worked a lick – bafflingly – what’s the point anyway?

It occurred to me that with about 15 minutes to play in the third, there was a time when that game would’ve taken an hour to play out. Guys on the losing side would be trying to make a statement to their coaches, their fans, their teammates. It might’ve gotten ugly. On Thursday, however, every Leaf not named Oliver Ekman-Larsson (the only one who’s legally allowed to get mad) floated to the final buzzer in saltwater tanks, cucumbers on their eyes.

Mostly though, he’s flummoxed, befuddled, and confounded by the response he’s getting to both the carrot and the stick. The consistent failsafe solution of “work harder” only helps when players are inspired to tap into that playoff-only supply of effort, and so far he can’t convince them to break that glass for any of these emergencies.

Down 2-0, the third period was one of the worst efforts I can recall the Leafs putting forth. 

A couple minutes in, Bobby McMann takes a rim with open ice ahead and teammates beside him. His coach is preaching being north-south direct, I’ll remind you, and McMann takes it… back into the Capitals’ forecheck, which the rim had already beat.

Moments before that, the Leafs’ top line was losing battles in the D-zone when Nylander took this fadeaway, straight-legged swipe of a half-ass clearing attempt (which led to a minute-long D-zone shift).

It’s an unserious effort, just whacking it back to his own position on the off chance that maybe it skips out of the zone. Here, you take it.

With all this, there is talk about the job Berube is doing, and if he’s the right man to lead this Leafs team. If I’m Berube hearing that my first thought is, “what are you even talking about?”

He got the job just last year, led them to their first Atlantic Division title of the Matthews era, saw them win a round and go seven games with Florida. Then this year, Berube was handed a very new (and unimproved) roster before getting smoked by injuries, including to his goalies early on. He has a very good case to complain about his name even being mentioned in those absolutely-happening “should they fire the coach?” conversations. 

But you just can’t have no ideas. You can’t.

When you’re the coach, you’re on the hook for both the record and for the answers when that record is bad, and so to offer some version of “No clue why they’re playing like that” while the team flirts with the league’s basement is, again, not great. 

In the areas where coaching is supposed to be evident – special teams and structure – the Leafs look borderline dysfunctional. A kind review of their best players right now would put them somewhere between struggling and unhappy. 

So that coaching conversation — is he the right man for the job? — is a tough one to have, because Berube’s had success, and very recently here too. And by all accounts he’s an extremely well-liked man and certainly one who, within our game, is worthy of so much respect. 

But what do the higher-ups around the Leafs want to do?

It doesn’t help that the very thing Berube did when he took over St. Louis halfway through the 2018-19 season doesn’t seem impossible with this Leafs team (at least the positive turnaround part), because Toronto also has talent. He took over a bottom-feeding Blues team and pushed them to a Stanley Cup. It doesn’t even have to result in that same outcome to be considered a success this time (or even worthwhile), as at this point, even just “better” would be accepted.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Eastern Conference is perhaps the most average it’s ever been, and any kind of surge at all could see a run up the standings to where the Leafs are in a much more familiar spot.

But right now, Toronto is at a point in those standings, and the schedule, where all the non-coach-firing things are hard to do. It’s too early to “sell” for assets, not even halfway through the season, as it would be a long cross-country trek to the finish line from this far out. You can always sell closer to the deadline if things don’t quickly turn around… but you might as well try to get them turned around first.

And moving multiple pieces — or, hell, moving one of their huge names (like Matthews!) as the random emails I get occasionally suggest — are huge decisions to make about the direction of the franchise. Players can stick around for a decade-plus, while coaches almost never do. An organization will give the great players 10 chances where the coaches get just one. 

So at this point, if everyone is co-baffled by the bafflingly bad results, and it’s too hard to do big things with big players, a lot of chips are stacked against Berube. 

The case for him is basically the few things I’ve already mentioned: their division win last year, his short tenure with the team, the money he’s owed (lots), and that people seem to really like him. It’s also right before Christmas, which, from a human side, may matter.

It would seem extreme to do anything 1.5 seasons into Berube’s tenure, but the way the team looks is — as I may have mentioned — baffling. And in what was appropriately billed as a “go for it” year, the “it” wasn’t supposed to be bafflement. It was supposed to be the Stanley Cup, which at this point seems about as far away as the summer solstice. 

If the Leafs’ head coach can’t come up with some answers, some explanations, some solutions sometime soon, then the organization might start looking for someone who can. Berube can coach, but this roster does not seem to want to play the way he wants it to, which has left players, coaches and fans alike with our word of the day…

Everyone, everywhere is baffled.