Berube promises accountability, communication as Maple Leafs coach

TORONTO -- One of the hallmarks of Craig Berube’s coaching style is his ability to hold players accountable. If something needs to be said, he will not hesitate to say it, and do it directly.

But in order for the message to be heard, Berube knows that a partnership with his players needs to be established.

“I think it starts in the summertime, getting to know the players, them getting to understand what I’m all about, how I’m going to coach and how I’m going to coach each individual and the team, Berube said Tuesday, when he was introduced as the 32nd coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs after being hired Friday. "And then when you have to hold a player accountable for whatever, ice time, whatever the situation is, they understand it more.

“Communications is huge. I think one of my strengths is I’m a great communicator with my players. They know where they stand. I’m going to tell them when they’re playing well, I’m going to tell them when they’re not playing well. I’m going to tell them when things need to be improved upon.”

The 58-year-old will be tasked with finding a way to get a perennially successful team during the regular season to have a similar level of success during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Although the Maple Leafs have made the playoffs each season since 2016-17, success in the postseason has been elusive. Toronto has won one playoff round in that span, a first-round victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2023.

A look through a wider lens reveals more frustration. That opening-round win last season marked the first time the Maple Leafs had advanced to the second round of the playoffs since 2002.

Throughout the search for a new coach that began after Sheldon Keefe was fired May 9, following Toronto's Game 7 loss to the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference First Round, general manager Brad Treliving said the process kept leading back to Berube despite interviewing nine candidates for the job.

“Somebody who can command respect, presence is an important thing to me,” Treliving said. “To me, you either have it or you don’t. Craig has it. When you talk with people around the game, people that I trust, [it’s] 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 and those are all the areas I think are important, and I certainly feel Craig touches all those areas.”

Berube is 281-190-72 in 543 regular-season games as coach of the Philadelphia Flyers and St. Louis Blues. He's 27-31 in 58 Stanley Cup Playoff games and guided St. Louis to its first Stanley Cup championship in 2019 after taking over that season for Mike Yeo on Nov. 20, 2018.

Berube had a record of 206-132-44 with the Blues. He was fired on Dec. 12 after St. Louis got off to a 13-14-1 start and worked as an analyst with Turner Sports.

Since Treliving was hired as general manager on May 31, 2023, he has spoken about shifting the focus more toward the team as a whole and away from a “core four” of centers Auston Matthews and John Tavares and forwards Mitch Marner and William Nylander. He reiterated that desire again Tuesday.

“Character matters, character matters,” Treliving said. “It matters with your team and it matters most importantly with your head coach. What brought me back to him was his leadership, his ability to build teams and have a team first concept, his ability to connect with players and his ability to hold players accountable.

“The importance of team, and it sounds motherhood-ish, cliche-ish, but No. 1, you need everyone. We’ve talked in this market here, this is not about one, two, three, four, five people, this is about a team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. ... The ability to build a team, the ability to connect with players ... to have success at this time of the year is very difficult and you have to push people into uncomfortable positions and into uncomfortable things, but to me, you have to connect with them first. There has to be a partnership, a relationship and a trust.”

It is a vision that Berube shares.

“We want to be highly competitive every night and it’s all about the team for me,” Berube said. “That’s one of the things I really focus on. Everybody is important on the team. They all have jobs and roles on the team and that’s a real important aspect for me.

“We want to play a north game, we want to play fast, we want to be ahead of the team and when I talk about heaviness, it’s not fighting and running guys through the boards. The game has changed but you still have to be strong on pucks, you’ve got to win puck battles, those are priorities for me. Just playing physical and north and playing as fast as we can. We have to have structure in all three zones.”

The Maple Leafs canvassed a cross section of players who had been coached by Berube in the past about what they thought of him and kept receiving a similar response.

“It was first-liners, fourth-liners, Canadian guys, European guys, players who have played different styles and had different backgrounds," Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said. "And yet they all came back to us with the same message, that he was a great coach, a great person and ‘I’d go through a wall for him.’ ”

Berube did not address how he will build out his coaching staff and did not touch much on the current roster other than to say, “they have some great players here.”

How many of the same players remain once next season begins remains to be seen.

Forwards Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi, defensemen TJ Brodie, Joel Edmundson, Mark Giordano and Ilya Lyubushkin, and goalie Ilya Samsonov each can become an unrestricted free agent July 1. Perhaps most importantly, Marner and Tavares each has one year remaining on his contract and each has a no-move clause. Each is eligible to sign a contract extension July 1, though there has been no indication as to how Toronto intends to proceed on that front.

In the meantime, though, Treliving has crossed off the first item on the offseason to-do list: naming Berube as the Maple Leafs' next coach.

“We were very fortunate to have somebody of Craig’s ability available,” Treliving said. “That doesn’t happen all the time and I just think he’s a great match. He’s a perfect fit for the group where we’re at right now.”