TORONTO – After the Toronto Maple Leafs fired assistant coach Marc Savard on Monday, there were some questions regarding if that would be the only move made amidst a massive slide, particularly with Craig Berube.
For now, no.
Brad Treliving met with the media ahead of Toronto’s Next Gen Game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and gave the Maple Leafs’ head coach a vote of confidence.
“Well, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals of what happens with this,” Treliving said. “We’ve got a good coach. We’ve got to continue to make our team better. We’ve got areas that we’ve got to get better in. It’s not lost on us where the team’s at. We live it every day. But I think we’ve got a real good coach.
“And that’s not to say we don’t change some things, tweak some things. We’ve done that over the course of the last couple of weeks. When you get in these situations, to me, you have to band together and you look for collective solutions. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
With the Leafs sliding further out of a playoff spot with each passing game, many have wondered what will become of Berube, but at this point in time, his job appears to be safe. He’s only in his second season with the Leafs, with the team finishing first in the Atlantic Division with a 52-26-4 record in his first season in 2024-25. Toronto also advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the second time in the Leafs’ current nine-season playoff appearance streak.
The Leafs currently find themselves in a stretch where they’ve lost five of their last six games and are 7-11-3 in their last 21 games, with only five wins in regulation in that stretch. The performance has them last in the Eastern Conference and six points behind the New Jersey Devils for the final wild card spot.