The Toronto Maple Leafs made it official on Wednesday: Craig Berube will not return as head coach in the fall. After just two seasons at the helm, the former Stanley Cup-winning coach is now unemployed.
It’s a stunning turn of events from a year ago. Last year, Berube seemed to have Toronto poised to compete for its first Stanley Cup since 1967. The Leafs won the Atlantic Division, won a playoff series and pushed Florida to the limit in the second round. But nothing went right this year, as Toronto finished under .500 and well out of the playoffs. The Leafs’ point total fell from 108 to just 78, leaving them last in the Atlantic.
And because of that, Berube now ties Paul Maurice for the shortest tenure in Toronto in this century. The Leafs have had seven coaches since 1998, and Berube and Maurice were the only ones not to get a third year.
So why didn’t it work in Toronto? Here’s a look at why Craig Berube failed.
The Leafs Weren’t Built For Berube
When Berube got hired, he noted that he had never had the type of skill players that were on the Leafs’ roster. That initially seemed to be a positive, as Berube had shown an ability to get the most out of lesser players in St. Louis. He’d even won a Stanley Cup with the Blues, something Toronto desperately craves.
But there’s a difference between getting the most out of good players and asking elite players to do things that don’t align with their skills. Berube’s bruising style is good for teams that are built to play physical hockey and don’t have the natural gifts to thrive on open ice.
That is not Toronto. The Leafs are blessed with talented skaters like Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares, all of whom thrive in space. Berube made this into a grinding team focused on defense. That might be the way he wants to coach, but it’s not how the roster was constructed.
The reality is that Toronto overreacted to playoff failures. The Leafs were convinced they needed to be tougher when Sheldon Keefe lost his third consecutive Game 7. But Keefe’s laid-back style allowed the Leafs’ skill players to shine. Berube made the Leafs slower and grittier, and that wasn’t a good fit for the roster.
The Goaltending Fell Apart
But if Berube was a poor match for the Leafs, why did it work in 2024-25 and not this season? That answer is fairly simple: the goaltending collapsed miserably.
Neither Joseph Woll nor Anthony Stolarz got the job done this season, as both netminders posted save percentages under .900. A defensive-minded team needs its goaltenders closer to .920, which is exactly where Stolarz sat the year before.
When the goaltenders play well, it can paper over a lot of problems. And in Toronto’s case, it masked plenty: the Leafs only gave up 231 goals in 2024-25. That was a drop of 32 goals from 2023-24, a major improvement.
At the same time, Toronto scored 35 fewer goals in 2024-25 under Berube than it did in 2023-24 under Keefe. With strong net play, that tradeoff was manageable. This year, however, the Leafs scored 253 goals and allowed 299. That equation was never going to end well.
The Leafs Mismanaged Their Roster
Berube doesn’t deserve all, or even most of the blame. That goes to the man who hired him, former general manager Brad Treliving. Treliving chose the wrong coach for his roster, but his problems went beyond that.
Specifically, Treliving misjudged the value of Mitch Marner.
Marner struggled in the playoffs in Toronto, getting tagged as a symbol of the Leafs’ April failures. But this year, he’s in the playoffs with Vegas. Marner has 16 points in 11 playoff games with the Golden Knights, which leads the NHL this postseason.
The Leafs, meanwhile, tried to take a Moneyball approach to replacing Marner. It didn’t come close to working, and their offense was a shell of itself in 2026. Nobody expected the 300-plus goals that came under Keefe, but the Leafs should have at least matched the 268 scored last year under Berube. Instead, only Detroit scored fewer than Toronto’s 253.
Without Marner, the Leafs became slower and more predictable. Matthews had the worst season of his Leafs career, a serious concern given how limited this franchise’s long-term flexibility is.
Where Do the Leafs Go From Here?
Toronto doesn’t have many options. Everything starts with finding the right coach for this roster. The Leafs can’t realistically blow things up because their window is built almost entirely around the present.
Winning the draft lottery and landing the No. 1 pick certainly helped, but it also came with a cost. The selection was top-five protected in a previous trade with Boston, meaning the Leafs now owe the Bruins one of their next two first-round picks. The other is already owed to Philadelphia, leaving Toronto without another first-round selection beyond this year’s top choice until 2029.
So the Leafs have to make this core work. That means finding a middle ground between Keefe and Berube, a system that allows the skill players to thrive while still adding more structure and toughness.
It won’t be easy, especially with the rest of the Atlantic improving quickly. But with the right coach behind the bench, Toronto can still keep its Cup window open.
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