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I play lousy hockey
There is no feeling of pride.
And the list of things the Maple Leafs don't do becomes their own textbook on how not to win in hockey.
But does that mean management should consider Craig Berube's future as Leafs coach? General manager Brad Treliving fired Sheldon Keefe two years ago because he didn't believe he could take the next steps under Keefe.
Prior to this, Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas made the decision to let Babcock go.
It's easy to say that firing Berube will make the Leafs better. Around this time in 2018—a lot of hockey happens during Gray Cup Week—the St. Louis Blues fired coach Mike Yeo and replaced him with Berube. It was perhaps the greatest midseason firing in hockey history.
The Blues won the Stanley Cup that season. No one believes that hiring a coach can help the Leafs win the Stanley Cup this season.
Now the big pictureThere's a huge difference between Babcock and Berube as coaches, not to mention the style of play each favors. But the biggest difference is that Babcock is so easy to dislike in his later years, while Berube is someone you want to associate with or believe in.
If you can't play for Berube, you probably won't make it in the NHL. If you can't find a way to get the job done under his guidance, then you've probably run out of trainers. But with Pete DeBoer and his amazing NHL coaching career out of a job, it reminds me of the year the Blackhawks decided to hire Joel Quenneville as coach, not because they didn't like Denis Savard as a coach, but because Quenneville was available and they knew what kind of coach he turned out to be.
You can't blame Berube for the Leafs' wobbliness. goalkeeper. The coach had nothing to do with the disappearance of the intermittently absent Joseph Woll a quarter of the season. You can't blame the coach for giving Anthony Stolarz the opportunity to be the No. 1 goalie but not being able to pick up the baton. You can't blame him for Stolarz's continued inability to keep his stick on the ice and allow goals that great – not just great – goalies are supposed to stop.
A bad goalkeeper hurts the team
Stolarz is wounded. Wall could be back by Friday. Dennis Hildeby is an AHL goaltender. The obvious depth the Leafs thought they had in goal didn't show up in this difficult quarterfinal season.
Chris Tanev missed his 10th game Thursday night. It's not the coach's fault that his most reliable defender is out (even though Tanev got off to a slow start) because they don't have anyone to take his place.
Of all the things Tanev does well – and certainly did last season – is defend Jake McCabe. McCabe, partnered with Tanev, is an excellent NHL defenseman. McCabe not playing with Tanev is not a good NHL defenseman. He makes too many bad decisions. He doesn't move the puck particularly quickly.
The Leafs have the No. 1 pairing with Tanev and McCabe. Without it, it's a dog's breakfast on the blue line. And it shows in many ways: The Leafs allow more than four goals per game when Tanev is not playing. And who knows if and when Tanev will return this season.
With this defense, the Leafs aren't moving the puck well enough or fast enough to create any semblance of an offensive burst, or offense for that matter. The gap between defense and forwards—a graph that exists on virtually every losing team—is too wide.
The Leafs had 15 shots on goal over three periods and 35 seconds of overtime in a 4-3 loss to Los Angeles on Thursday night. Fifteen shots at home? Lowest total this season, home or away. The lowest total in Berube's two seasons as coach.
The lowest in almost all history.
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Don't blame Tavares for this mess.
If it weren't for John Tavares, the Leafs season would all but be over. He performs brilliantly. He's practically alone on this list.
William Nylander plays giveaways every couple of nights. Matthew Nice works hard. And what after that?
What to celebrate? What to believe? It doesn't look like Berube needs to fix anything. He has several things that require his attention, maybe more.
Who are the Leafs now? This is a soft team that doesn't work hard enough, doesn't have good enough goalies, doesn't know how to play team defense, isn't fast enough, doesn't know how to create offense in a hurry or get enough leadership, doesn't have better than average special teams, has no identity except for the wrong timing of identity.
Is it time to panic, Berube was asked, given all the urgency surrounding the Leafs and the team in second place in the Eastern Conference?
“Panic will never help”“,” the coach said. “But there is a certain level of urgency that has been there for some time.”
The urgency and confusion continues as the Maple Leafs season continues.
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