Maple Leafs fire coach Craig Berube after two seasons, last-place finish in Atlantic Division
TORONTO (AP) — The Toronto Maple Leafs fired coach Craig Berube on Wednesday after he guided the team to a last-place finish in the Atlantic Division this season.
The move ended Berube’s two-year run with the Maple Leafs. He helped the club to a 108-point campaign in his first season as coach, but Toronto struggled mightily in 2025-26.
“Craig is a tremendous coach and an even better person,” general manager John Chayka said in a statement. “This decision is more reflective of an organizational shift and an opportunity for a fresh start than it is an evaluation of Craig."
Chayka was hired earlier this month. He succeeded Brad Treliving, who was fired in March.
Toronto won the NHL draft lottery last week. The Maple Leafs are expected to pick either Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg with the first overall pick on June 26 at the NHL draft in Buffalo.
Berube went 84-62-18 with Toronto, but the Maple Leafs were just 32-36-14 this season. The drop in points — from 108 to 78 — was the team’s largest year-over-year points decline.
The Maple Leafs headed into the season with high hopes despite the loss of star winger Mitch Marner.
Toronto added a trio of forwards — Matias Maccelli, Dakota Joshua and Nicolas Roy — in hopes of replacing those minutes by committee on a team thought to be still poised for Stanley Cup contention.
The Maple Leafs, however, never really got out of second gear. Along with a string of key injuries and absences, the club largely looked out of sorts from puck drop.
Despite a roster still anchored by star forwards Auston Matthews and William Nylander, the Maple Leafs’ power play was a huge issue.
Defensive deficiencies also caused glaring problems for a club that finished with the second-worst goals-against mark and was outshot a league-worst 66 times.
“They played with more passion than we did,” Berube told reporters in December after a 4-0 road loss to the Washington Capitals. “That’s what it boils down to. It looked to me like they had way more urgency in their game, more passion in their game. That’s the difference.”
Asked to explain how that could be the case, he replied: “Ask those guys, not me.”
The exchange was just one example of clear disconnect.
A three-time Maurice (Rocket) Richard Trophy winner as the NHL’s top goal-scorer, Matthews found the back of the net just 27 times before suffering a season-ending knee injury on a hit from Anaheim Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas in March.
Toronto’s players didn’t do much in the immediate aftermath, which led to stinging rebukes from Berube — a former NHL enforcer with the seventh-most penalty minutes in league history — media members and fans as the locker room culture was called into question.
Berube, 60, was hired in May 2024 after Treliving let Sheldon Keefe go following 4 1/2 seasons in charge.
Toronto won a playoff round for just the second time in the NHL’s salary-cap era during his first campaign. The Maple Leafs beat the Ottawa Senators before falling to Florida in a series accented by 6-1 losses on home ice in Games 5 and 7. The Panthers would go on to win their second straight Stanley Cup.
The Maple Leafs had embraced Berube’s straightforward, no-nonsense, north-south approach in 2024-25 after Keefe was unable to get the same talented group over its playoff hump but didn’t come close to duplicating that success a second time.
Berube’s coaching journey began with the Philadelphia Flyers organization after retiring as a player. He worked his way up the ladder, moving from the AHL to the NHL as an assistant in 2006-07.
He took over as Flyers head coach early in 2013-14 and lasted another season before getting fired.
Berube then led the St. Louis Blues’ AHL affiliate after a year on the sidelines. He became an NHL associate coach in 2017-18 and was promoted to the top job with St. Louis in November 2018.
Berube rallied the group, which at one point sat last in the overall standings, to make the playoffs before it went on a magical run that culminated with the franchise’s only Cup victory.
Berube lost in the first round each of the next three seasons and missed out entirely in 2022-23. The Blues fired him just 28 games into the subsequent campaign.
When Berube was hired by the Maple Leafs, Treliving said he had plenty of conversations with people who worked with, worked under and played alongside the former tough guy.
“They talked about how they would go through a wall for him,” Treliving said. “There was the connection he had with his players, the accountability he had with his players, and the bond he was able to build with staff.”
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