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Playing lousy hockey
A sense of pride is nowhere to be found.
And the list of things the Maple Leafs don’t do well is becoming its own textbook of how not to win at hockey.
But does that mean management has to consider Craig Berube’s future as coach of the Leafs? General manager Brad Treliving fired Sheldon Keefe two years ago because he didn’t believe he could take the next steps with Keefe as coach.
Before that, Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas made the decision to let Babcock go.
It’s easy to say firing Berube now will make the Leafs better. It was about this time in 2018 – a lot of hockey happens in Grey Cup Week – when the St. Louis Blues fired coach Mike Yeo and replaced him with Berube. That happened to be just about the greatest mid-season firing in hockey history.
The Blues won the Stanley Cup that season. No one believes a coach hiring can help the Leafs win a Stanley Cup this season.
Now big picture, there is an enormous difference between Babcock and Berube as coaches, let along the style of play each man favours. But the largest difference is Babcock was so easy to dislike in his latter years and Berube is the kind of man you want to hang around with or believe in.
If you can’t play for Berube, you probably can’t succeed in the NHL. If you can’t find a way to get the job done with him coaching, then you’ve probably run out of coaches. But with Pete DeBoer and a terrific career record as an NHL coach out of work, this reminds me of the year the Blackhawks decided to hire Joel Quenneville to coach not because they didn’t care for Denis Savard as coach, but because Quenneville was available and they knew the kind of coach he happened to be.
You can’t blame Berube for the Leafs wonky goaltending. The coach has had nothing to do with the quarter-season disappearance of the occasionally unavailable Joseph Woll. You can’t blame the coach for Anthony Stolarz, given the opportunity to be as No. 1 goaltender, and him failing to grab the baton. You can’t blame him for Stolarz’s constant inability to keep his stick on the ice and to allow goals that big-time – not just big – goaltenders are supposed to stop.
Bad goaltending is hurting the team
Stolarz is hurt. Woll could be back by Friday. Dennis Hildeby is an AHL goalie. The apparent depth the Leafs believed they had in goal has not been in evidence through this struggling quarter season.
Chris Tanev missed his 10th game Thursday night. It’s not the coach’s fault that his soundest defenceman is out – even if Tanev was off to a slow start – because they have no one who can take his place.
Of all that Tanev does well – and certainly did well last season – was protect Jake McCabe. McCabe, as a partner for Tanev, is a fine NHL defenceman. McCabe, not playing with Tanev, is not a fine NHL defenceman. He makes too many bad decisions. He doesn’t move the puck particularly quickly.
The Leafs have a No. 1 pairing with Tanev and McCabe. Without him, it’s a dog’s breakfast on the blue line. And it shows in so many ways – the Leafs give up more than four goals a game when Tanev doesn’t play. And who knows if or when Tanev is coming back this season.
With this defence, the Leafs don’t move the puck well enough or quickly enough to create any semblance of offensive rush or offence for that matter. The divide between defence and forwards – the graph that exists on just about every losing team – is too wide.
The Leafs had 15 shots on goal in three periods and 35 seconds of overtime in the 4-3 loss to Los Angeles Thursday night. Fifteen shots at home? The lowest this season, home or away. The lowest in Berube’s two seasons as coach.
The lowest in almost forever.
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Don’t blame Tavares for this mess
If it weren’t for John Tavares, this Leafs season would almost be over. He’s performing brilliantly. He’s pretty much alone on that list.
William Nylander plays takeaway giveaway every couple of nights. Matthew Knies works hard. And after that, what?
What to celebrate? What to believe in? It’s not like Berube has any one thing to fix. He has a handful of items that require his attention and maybe more than that.
Who are the Leafs right now? They’re a soft team that doesn’t work hard enough, doesn’t get good enough goaltending, doesn’t know how to play team defence, isn’t fast enough, doesn’t know how to create offence off the rush or get enough leadership, doesn’t have better than average special teams, doesn’t have an identity except there wrong time of identity.
Is it time to panic, Berube was asked, with all this urgency surrounding the Leafs and the club second last in the Eastern Conference?
“Panicking is never going to help,” said the coach. “But there’s a level of urgency that’s been there for a bit.”
The urgency and confusion continues as the Maple Leafs season muddles on.
ssimmons@postmedia.com
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