Craig Berube and William Nylander aren’t the first coach and leading scorer under the Maple Leafs’ lodge to find themselves in a challenging relationship.
In a hockey-crazed city where a few bad games can turn symmetry into a soap opera, things can get frosty and feisty. Nylander has needed a push from a few coaches in his career, yet it sems to take a team crisis for him to respond.
Case in point was Berube calling out the Leafs’ leadership group a few days ago.
“If I had to look at one thing, it’s that (Nylander) has to get involved more, engaged more, work his way through it,” Berube said.
Nylander further incurred the coach’s wrath with a turnover that led to Chicago’s 2-0 short-handed goal on Tuesday.
Yet with Scotiabank Arena’s boo birds flocking, Nylander assisted on Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s goal. Then, with the kind of forechecking he has been criticized for not providing, he worked the puck to Auston Matthews for the tie.
The Leafs completed a 3-2 win, with Nylander still atop the team with 11 goals and 25 helpers in 28 games.
“I never know what I’m going to get from Willie, you know,” Berube mused earlier this month. “He keeps me on my toes about things.
“We have our opinions about certain things, but for the most part I think we communicate really well. I really enjoy the challenge of coaching him.”
The book is still open on who will eventually narrate, but similar situations with the Leafs through the years haven’t ended amicably:
Punch Imlach and Frank Mahovlich
The abrasive general manager-coach wasn’t going to treat his young star with kid gloves. What began as a mutually beneficial trust that produced four Stanley Cups in the 1960s and five years with Mahovlich as leading scorer quickly soured.
Imlach was harder on Mahovlich than most players to squeeze more from him and didn’t like it when he held out briefly for a new contract in the days when management ruled with an iron fist.
Sensitive to criticism (Mahovlich noted that Imlach mispronounced his name), he twice checked into hospital for depression.
Imlach finally traded him in 1968 to Detroit, a deal that upset fans, but gave Mahovlich a fresh start.
QUOTE: “If I can’t please them here, maybe I’ll please them there,” Mahovlich said.
Roger Neilson and Darryl Sittler
SIttler recalled the first time Neilson gathered the Leafs in a cramped room at the Gardens and introduced the wonders of video.
It was nascent technology, part of a slew of new ideas Neilson brought to the NHL. Sittler held tremendous sway as captain and, had he not bought in, the Neilson saga wouldn’t have had the two years of impressive results that briefly gave hope in the Harold Ballard years.
Sittler and his lieutenants even convinced the old man to rehire Neilson a couple of days after firing him on live TV.
QUOTE: “Mostly, Roger made you accountable, to be prepared for every night like it was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.” Sittler said.
John Brophy and Miroslav Frycer
Put an ear to the wall of what’s now the vegetable aisle at the Church Street Loblaws for echoes of those epic ‘F*** you’ shouting matches at the Gardens between these combatants.
The talented Frycer had a future in Toronto, until Brophy came to town bent on turning the coddled Leafs into Slap Shot’s Charlestown Chiefs. He took away Frycer’s alternate captaincy, ordered him to dump “that European crap” for the dump-and-chase and use a punching bag as a prelude to fighting.
Free-spirit Frycer needed little urging to rebel at that point, while Brophy once hacked at his injured leg to toughen him at practice. Frycer was infamously a healthy scratch in a Long Island hotel room gobbling a burger when needed at the last minute to play across the street. He never found NHL success again.
QUOTE: “Maybe in a sick way he was trying to make me a better player.” Frycer said of Brophy.
Pat Burns and Doug Gilmour
In his previous post in Montreal, Burns was embroiled in battles of will with a couple of Canadiens that became public distractions.
Not to worry here, as Gilmour and he were kindred spirits. Any disagreements would be settled post-game or practice — “a beer and a fart” with his workaholic centre.
Burns let Gilmour, his predecessor as captain Wendel Clark and later, Mats Sundin, set their own schedule, which with the first two helped back-to-back conference championship appearances in 1993 and ‘94.
QUOTE: “He’s held together with thread right now. We’ll call that planet he’s from and get some more.” Burns on the worn-down Gilmour during the run of 21 playoff games in 42 days.
Pat Quinn and Mats Sundin
Quinn had grown up admiring and even playing beside some of the great Leafs. The club needed a kick when Quinn was named coach, but that included working with, not against, the franchise scoring leader.
“Your captain should be your best player,” Quinn often said, though they butted heads early when Sundin publicly said the team “gave up” in a loss and was himself called out by Quinn in the room for going to the press. Sundin didn’t back down.
QUOTE: “After that, we settled into an understanding,” Sundin said in his book, Home and Away. “I didn’t speak up often, but when I did, he didn’t ignore me.”
Ron Wilson and Phil Kessel
General manager Brian Burke hoped Kessel’s scoring talents would supersede his quirky work habits when he paid a huge trade price, but his coach ran out of patience as the Leafs kept missing the playoffs.
Kessel’s six years atop the Leafs leaderboard included one post-season appearance — after Wilson was replaced by Randy Carlyle. Wilson later referred to players such as Kessel as “uncoachable” in a 2015 radio interview.
QUOTE: “You can’t rely on Phil. When he’s not playing well, he’s a hard guy to get on board and get on your side. He shows obvious signs of brilliance but Phil’s problem, it’s pretty much the way he’s been through his career, he’s two weeks on and two weeks off,” Wilson said of Kessel to TSN.
Mike Babcock and Mitch Marner
The $50-million coach and a bushel of high first-round picks never found common ground. While Babcock’s most notable falling out was how he employed Matthews in playoffs, his exploitation of young Marner in a not-so-confidential ranking of teammates strained their ties. The story came out after Babcock was fired.
Marner was grateful veterans such as Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak did not hold the rankings against him, but went through three coaches in Toronto, swinging between great regular seasons and barren playoffs.
QUOTE: “I think it’s important you own any mistake you’ve made and try to get better,” Babcock said in the wake of Marner-Gate.
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