The Maple Leafs seem to really like Craig Berube.
This was what John Tavares told me when asked for his early impressions of Berube: “In general, he’s just a really good coach. I think (he’s) very personable, (a) really good communicator. I’d like to think that I’m gonna find a way to play well for whoever I’m playing for. But certainly, he’s shown why he’s been a very good coach, won a Stanley Cup, and made such a good impression.”
William Nylander was similarly enthusiastic: “I think that what Craig brings to the table is huge. He’s obviously won before, and I think he’s a great person. Great communicator. If there’s ever anything that you feel you can go talk to him and he’s honest with what he thinks.”
Great person. Great communicator. Great coach. The players have undoubtedly bought into the program of their first-year head coach.
If there’s one takeaway from the first half of the season, that’s it: The Leafs are a Berube team now.
The big outstanding question, the one that I’ve spent 41 games trying to figure out and won’t be able to answer definitively until later this spring, is whether that will be a good thing for the franchise.
Whether the Berube way leads to more (any) postseason success.
Leafs brass had a specific idea in mind when they brought in Berube to replace Sheldon Keefe behind the bench. They hoped he could be their own version of Paul Maurice and that Berube, who led the St. Louis Blues to a championship in his first season as head coach there, would alter the fabric of the Leafs in the way that paid dividends when it mattered, just as Maurice altered the fabric of the Florida Panthers en route to a Stanley Cup.
The Panthers were a high-scoring team before Maurice took over, but playoff success? Nada. Maurice got them checking harder and voila, a Cup.
Could Craig Berube lead the Leafs to a long postseason? (Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
After game No. 41, a 3-2 overtime win over Philadelphia on Sunday night, the Leafs are on pace for 108 points, which would be a slight improvement on last season’s 102.
Still, the question remains: Is this team better — and better, crucially, for playoff hockey? Or just… different?
The Berube way, ultimately, is supposed to equate to better defensive play. The Leafs are no longer a rush team, not even a little, for this reason. Rush chances can lead to turnovers and turnovers can lead to goals against. If the offence suffers, so be it.
Thing is, the Leafs don’t appear to be an elite defensive team at the moment.
Their defensive ranks at five-on-five at the halfway point:
- 19th in expected goals against
- 20th in scoring chances against
- 21st in shots against
- 23rd in shot attempts against
- 13th in high-danger attempts against
Compared to last season:
- 16th in expected goals against
- 14th in scoring chances against
- 8th in shots against
- 13th in shot attempts against
- 20th in high-danger attempts against
The front of the net is a priority for Berube, so improvement in the high-danger department is a positive. (Since Dec. 1, however, the Leafs rank 25th in that department.)
The other stuff has actually slipped from last season relative to the rest of the league.
The Berube Leafs have become a dump-and-chase team at the other end.
They want to forecheck their way into chances. They want to take pucks from low to high, from the corners to the point, put a mess of bodies around the net, and hope they deposit any loose change that emerges from there. The first two goals on Sunday night were good examples of that.
GUESS WHO!! pic.twitter.com/3ZmqnqNBsm
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) January 6, 2025
It’s not really an easier way to score though. If anything, it relies on more luck and less skill. Which explains, at least in part, why the Leafs now rank 19th in expected goal rate offensively. (Auston Matthews’ injury-plagued season is obviously a big part of that too.)
Not unlike a basketball team that becomes averse to scoring off a fast break, the Leafs don’t generate many of the easy chances that come in transition when foes are outnumbered and/or out of structure.
Which makes me wonder: Will it actually be harder for the Leafs to score in the postseason, not easier?
Because they tend to not blow teams away offensively anymore, the Leafs play a lot of close games, which might explain the 14 goals they’ve scored into an empty net, already two more than they scored all of last season.
Though the power play has taken a step back, the penalty kill, with Tanev leading the charge, is much improved. Part of that, too, is better goaltending, which is a huge part of the first-half story. After 41 games last season, the Leafs had a team save percentage of .896 which ranked 20th in the NHL.
This season: .906, third-best in the NHL. It’s the kind of goaltending the Leafs have lacked in the postseason and need later this spring.
Craig Berube has effectively shifted the Leafs toward a new style. (Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images)
All in all, it’s been a positive first half for Berube’s Leafs.
It’s to his credit (and the rest of the staff’s) that the players have bought in and that the Leafs have had no losing streak last longer than three games – and none longer than two since October.
The Leafs have also played all season either with a Matthews far less than 100 percent or without him entirely. And because they play a lower-event game, this team tends to hang around a lot of games (often boring ones) that turn when their best players break through (i.e. Morgan Rielly in overtime against the Flyers).
But is this difference good in a way that matters or just different? It’s still too early to tell.
Points
1. Rielly was unhappy with his start to the season.
“I don’t think I was consistent enough,” he explained in a recent check-in after practice. “I think I would play really well defensively and then I would have a game or two where I don’t play as well defensively. It was partly mental, partly new coach and just trying to buy in. I just think I struggled a little bit with consistency. And I think that now, the last month or so, I feel really good. I feel like I’ve got my game in a good place. The points aren’t flooding in, but I feel really good and I’m happy with the way it’s going.”
2. Matthews’ first two games back:
- One goal
- Four assists
- Eight shots
- 11 shot attempts
- Four hits
- One blocked shot
- 66 percent on draws
3. A positive stat from the first half: The Leafs have led for about 976 minutes this season. Only the Capitals, Jets and Oilers have led for more.
4. What might explain, at least in part, Nylander’s season-worst goal drought, now at seven games? His centres for a good chunk of the dry spell feel like part of the story. In four of those games, Nylander was centered by either David Kämpf or Pontus Holmberg.
He’s not been without looks, but a little regression shooting the puck was probably due.
Even amid this dry spell, Nylander is shooting 16.6 percent on the year, which would be a career high.
Nylander got John Tavares and Max Pacioretty back as linemates over the weekend, but that group just hasn’t had the same juice as before. Shot attempts were 11-6 for the Flyers in their minutes on Sunday.
William Nylander hasn’t found the net in seven games. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
5. Jake McCabe left Sunday’s game with an apparent concussion. (The Leafs called it “upper-body.”) McCabe hit his head on the ice during a fight with Garnet Hathaway and stumbled getting up. (Did Hathaway’s skate cut him on the way down?)
McCabe already missed five games with a head injury just over a month ago.
“It is concerning, for sure,” Berube said.
McCabe’s absence would be a big one for the Leafs. He’s one of the team leaders in ice time on the back end (Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson play similar minutes) and a first-unit defender at even strength and the penalty kill.
The Leafs turned to Ekman-Larsson to take on top lines with Tanev in McCabe’s earlier absence. That feels likely to be the way they go this time as well:
Ekman-Larsson – Tanev
Rielly – Myers
Benoit – Timmins
In focus: Matthews’ workload
The good news for the Leafs: Matthews looks about as close to Matthews after a six-game absence as he has all season. His skating has been more explosive, his puck control is back to normal and he’s even uncorked a more vintage-looking one-timer.
Early indications are the Leafs will try to curtail his workload slightly, something I advocated they do in this space a couple weeks back.
My solution was simple: Remove Matthews from the penalty kill, where he was playing on the top unit, and lop two minutes from his nightly plate of responsibilities instantly.
It appears the Leafs will do just that.
Matthews didn’t log a second shorthanded against the Bruins en route to a season-low 17.5 minutes. He filled in against the Flyers only when Kämpf was in the box during a 20-minute night (he was at 19:20 at the end of regulation) or in need of a breather.
If he’s going to play through something, which appears to be the case, it only makes sense for the Leafs to demand a little less of him in the hopes that he’s as fresh as possible for the postseason.
Matthews was playing the same minutes as last season before this most recent return to the lineup, right around 20.5 minutes a game.
Keeping him under 20 most nights should be the goal.
Auston Matthews logged a season-low 17:32 against Boston in his first game back from an injury absence. (John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
Things I Think I Think
The Leafs need their power play – with Matthews – to hit another gear in the second half.
The Leafs rank 18th in success rate on the power play this season and only 14th since Dec. 1. The underlying metrics suggest the Leafs have maybe been a tiny bit unlucky but not much, with about four fewer goals than expected.
Matthews’ return should help, at least in theory.
The five-man PP1 of Matthews, Nylander, Marner, John Tavares and Rielly has been oddly ineffective — bad, even. The Leafs are generating only 6.5 expected goals per 60 minutes when they’re together in an admittedly small sample of about 26 minutes, a mark that would rank 31st in the NHL. For context, that group generated about 13 expected goals per 60 in the two previous seasons.
The top unit moved pucks and bodies quicker in Matthews’ absence. There was no clear-cut destination for the puck. It simply moved. The Nylander-Marner-Tavares-Rielly-Matthew Knies quintet generated 9.6 expected goals per 60, which would rank second in the league.
The Leafs have often seen their power play sink in the second half and continue like that into the playoffs.
This year, a second-half surge into the postseason is in order.
—Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference
(Top photo: John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
