Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube, left, and assistant coach Marc Savard working in tandem during better times, in a game against the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre on Jan. 18.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been losing altitude for weeks, while telling people it’s a planned descent.
A few days ago, that changed. After a miserable loss in Washington, head coach Craig Berube figuratively threw up his hands.
“It looked to me like [the Capitals] had way more urgency in their game. Way more passion in their game. That’s the difference,” Berube said.
How do you explain that?
“Ask those guys, not me.”
You can think that as a head coach. Everybody else is thinking the same thing. You can scream it at people behind closed doors and cry about it to your wife, but there is no world in which you can say it to the media. Not in any town, but especially not this one. It’s like yelling “Fire!” at the fire station. It means you want to be clipped.
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On Monday, the Leafs reacted to Berube’s dismissible offence in the most Leafs’ way possible – by firing someone else instead.
Assistant coach, Marc Savard, is the one who caught the stray. He was dismissed Monday, less than 24 hours after the Leafs were slapped around in Dallas and 48 hours after they were humiliated in Nashville.
We are meant to understand that the reason this happened is that Savard is in charge of running the Leafs’ power play, which is worst in the league. It makes a sort of sense until you consider that Berube is in charge of Savard.
So if Berube’s not ultimately responsible for passion, urgency or the power play, what exactly is he in charge of? Making sure all the bags make it onto the bus? Checking the Starbucks’ order before it goes out?
The only reasonable explanation here is that the Leafs found out that Marc Savard actually works for the Florida Panthers, and has been breaking into the equipment room at night and dulling everyone’s skates. Otherwise, this is worse than a pointless gesture. It’s the starting gun that begins the general pandemonium.
Berube speaks with his bench during a game in Dallas on Sunday night that saw them lose 5-1 to the Stars.LM Otero/The Associated Press
It’s been a while since the Leafs had one of these. If you don’t remember the last one, you’re in for a treat.
It starts with expressions of confidence. That will be up to GM Brad Treliving and MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley. One or both of them should come out and tell people how much they believe in this roster, in this team and, especially, in Craig Berube. Great guy. He’ll turn it around.
That’s Berube’s sign to start asking friends if they know any real estate agents who work fast. The market is crap right now, but this is not a city to dally in once you’ve had a Leafs’ collapse hung around your neck. You will want to make yourself scarce for two, three years minimum.
Berube has already admitted he has no influence over the players. Do you think firing one of his henchmen is likely to improve that situation?
Here’s how this works in Toronto. The management sends a message by firing someone – ‘This isn’t working and you need to be better’ – and the team hears a completely different one – ‘We found the culprit and put him on a plane to Ottawa with enough gas to get to Kingston.’
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Berube’s variety of discipline – a healthy scratch for you, and you, and you. Healthy scratches for everyone! – couldn’t have been popular yesterday. It’s going to be a real winner now that he has been rendered powerless.
Berube knows he’s finished. It’s just a matter of when. He doesn’t want to wear all the blame for this. That’s how slips like the passion one happen. Prepare for more slips to come, except that now they will be ‘slips’.
This is where the players – many of whom seem to dislike Toronto and Torontonians – become openly resentful. I doubt they’ll take a go at the head coach, no matter how diminished he is. Hockey is the one sport where some coaches not only could beat up the players, but absolutely would do so if pressed. I can think of two guys on the Leafs’ roster who would last a full round with the current coach. That alone should keep things polite.
In Toronto, there is an easier target for player frustration – the fans.
The fans play their part by moving from general agita to acts of arena disobedience. Savard is their signal that their complaints are being heard. Which means more complaints.
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Now they’re getting on the players when they lose a shift, not just a period. If they can’t get their money’s worth as supporters, they will extract it as detractors.
The players start pushing back, usually through obscure, on-ice gestures. The coach sides with the players, which only makes the fans more anxious to get him fired right now.
Eventually, that happens, and then it’s the GM’s turn, and then the players start trying to abandon ship. The ones who can’t do that give up.
If I’m making this sound inevitable, that’s because it is. Not everywhere, but definitely here.
This Leafs generation – the most hyped in the team’s history – always had only two options. They were either going to win it all, or they were going to go up like the Hindenburg. There was no option for a slow fade.
Winning is easy. Option No. 2 required a complicated set of circumstances. Years of disappointment, an inability by players to connect with their customers, repeated instances of roster mismanagement, a series of firings, an unexplained regression, a general losing of faith amongst supporters.
The Leafs reached that threshold recently, but what was still needed was a visible sign of panic. Firing Savard is that sign.
Were I him, I would be feeling kind of proud. Savard can’t have imagined this would work out. It is Toronto. It was always going to end in ash.
But this way, he gets to say that he was the first pebble pushed over the edge, which started the avalanche.