Are the Toronto Maple Leafs going to fire Craig Berube?
The Toronto Maple Leafs are in need of some sort of change.
Heading into this year with high hopes as per usual, the Leafs are as bad as they’ve been in about a decade.
Currently, they’re all the way in 28th out of 32 NHL teams, a far cry from their usual spot as a perennial playoff contender.
And with nothing really going right for the blue and white these days, the whispers have started to circulate: is it time for Toronto to fire head coach Craig Berube?
A five-game losing streak in November surely feels like the type of run that could get a coach fired, right?
Only 101 regular-season games into his tenure as Toronto coach, it’d surely come as a shock if things came to an end this quickly with the 2019 Stanley Cup winner.
But if blunt team meetings keep happening with little turnaround on the ice, Toronto could opt to cut ties with Berube before things get even worse.
The case for the Leafs firing Craig Berube
The reasoning for letting Berube go is pretty simple: the Leafs don’t look anything like a competitive hockey team this season. They’ve gone just 1-5-0 on the road, with their 72 goals allowed second-worst in the NHL.
Whatever defensive messages Berube is sending his players, they clearly aren’t working right now.
And even though Berube came into the job with high expectations, it’s hard to see this iteration of the Leafs succeeding under him, given their performance so far this season. A new coach might be able to breathe some life into this group, just like how the Oilers fired Jay Woodcroft midseason before Kris Knoblauch took them to two straight Stanley Cup Final appearances.
The case against the Leafs firing Craig Berube
The Leafs certainly have their flaws at the moment, but it’s tough to pin all of them on Berube.
Toronto’s biggest issue this year has been its goaltending, with a combined .879 save percentage that sits seventh-worst in the NHL. Given that Toronto had the fourth-best save percentage a year ago, it’s one area the Leafs could certainly improve on.
Despite a -5 goal differential, Toronto has still scored the fifth-most goals in the league with 67. The offence hasn’t been an issue; they’ve just still managed to be outscored on many occasions.
And for every successful midseason coaching change, there’s usually plenty of others where the team either gets worse or stays relatively in the same predicament.
If the goaltending gets itself together, any talk of firing Berube might’ve been totally premature.
What does history tell us?
Since 1990, four of the Leafs’ 12 coaches have been fired midseason, while eight others have departed in the offseason.
Brad Treliving made four coaching changes (technically five, though then-interim Ryan Huska lasted just two games in charge at the time) while in a previous job with the Calgary Flames. Three of those changes were in-season.
However, all three of those in-season coaching changes were directly related to the firing of Bill Peters after a racism allegation against former player Akim Aliu, so it’s hard to draw too many patterns from Treliving’s previous GM role.
In any case, the usually patient Treliving probably isn’t ready to hand Berube his pink slip just yet, even if the seat around the head coach might be getting just a tiny bit warmer.