SIMMONS: DON'T TELL CRAIG BERUBE HE CAN'T BEAT THE ODDS AND HAVE SUCCESS COACHING MAPLE LEAFS
When Craig Berube still thought he was an NHL player — he hadn’t yet announced his retirement — he got a call from Washington general manager George McPhee asking if he was interested in coaching.
He still wanted to play, “even though I knew I was done” but went to the interview in Washington. McPhee offered him a job that day.
When he went back to Philadelphia, where he lived and still lives and had played parts of seven years with the Flyers, he told his bosses, Paul Holmgren and Bobby Clarke, that he was going to Washington.
They said, no you’re not — you’re staying here.
And stay he did. For the next 12 years. As a company man doing whatever they needed him to do.
If they needed a head coach in the AHL, he was the guy. If they needed an assistant for Ken Hitchcock or John Stevens or Peter Laviolette, he was the guy. And if they needed a head coach for the Flyers, as they did for two seasons after Laviolette was fired, he was the guy.
Berube, great soldier as a junior hockey player, great soldier as a semi-skilled NHL tough guy, became a great soldier in Philadelphia, admired for his hard work, his giant heart, his hard head, his loyalty and his broad view of the game.
That’s the new coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs — unlike so many of the old coaches.
Sheldon Keefe was mostly finesse when he played. Randy Carlyle was a near-all-star. Mike Murphy was a sound NHL player. Paul Maurice was a kid. Pat Quinn and Pat Burns are closer to Berube in makeup, but Burns never did play at a very high level and Quinn toughed his way through nine NHL seasons, mostly on size and brawn and brain.
Against all odds, the undrafted Craig Berube played 1,054 games in the NHL, scored the lowest number of points for any forward who played that long, fought 303 times, never suffered a concussion that he knows of and now has coached professionally for 25 years.
His was a career built on guts and blood and smarts and intensity.
Which makes him a most unusual choice — a fascinating choice, really — to coach the high-end talented Maple Leafs.
But when you listen to him speak, tell the stories of his past — how he played junior as an overage, how he managed to find his way to Philadelphia — understand where he has been and who has he played for and with, you may be witnessing a modern-day version of Burns, without the outwardly bombastic personality.
He wants the Leafs to play “heavy hockey.” He wants to build a third line like he had in St. Louis, like Tampa had in its two Stanley Cup runs. “An identity line,” he calls it.
He wants every player to be defined by their role, understand what that role is, and he wants every player to matter on his team.
“We want to be a team first,” Berube said in a long, sit-down interview. “When I look at teams that win, it’s always about the team and what’s best for the team. It’s not about individuals.
“We want to play aggressive, physical hockey. I like to have a heavy team. And we want to play fast. And when I say heavy, I don’t mean running around and fighting people. Our team in St. Louis probably had the least number of fights in the NHL. We just played hard hockey, good in front of both nets.
“Everybody needs to have a role and be used. When it gets down to the nitty gritty and the playoffs — and I really don’t want to talk about playoffs now — you need everybody chipping in.
“Right now, I want to focus on camp. That’s it. Don’t get ahead of yourself. I don’t like to do that.
“We want a team that’s hard to play against. We don’t want to just outscore our problems. We want to play good, sound, structured, disciplined, hard hockey.”
The last sentence could have come from the late Burns, who took the Leafs to the NHL semifinals in his first two seasons in Toronto. That’s how Burns viewed the NHL: Every game and every player mattered.
And no one got more out of stars at playoff time than Burns.
Berube’s approach is that the season is all about building habits and building lines and putting his players in position to succeed, and if there is one giant difference between him and Burns, it might be time related.
It’s about communication. Berube talks to his players. All the time. Sometimes bluntly.
“You have to communicate these days,” he said. “Players want to know how and why and I tell them.”
He played for Mike Keenan, who rarely spoke to his players and, when he did, he was usually terse about it.
He played for Ken Hitchcock, who didn’t talk to his players as much as he yelled at them, All the time.
He played for Roger Neilson, whom he loved — didn’t everybody love Roger? — and learned through video.
He played for Dave King and was technically invigorated.
And he played for Ron Wilson, one of three former Leafs coaches he played for, who may have changed him.
“Ron Wilson came in and taught me something. I was a fighter. Ron came in and said to me: ‘Play the game, you have ability, play the game.’ He allowed me to play. I didn’t go out every night looking to fight somebody. He trusted me out there against good players and I held my own. He always called us the checking line. I’ll always be thankful to Ron Wilson for that.”
Maple Leafs players need to understand who they have coaching them now. They need to understand who Berube is, what he is, how he fought his way, literally and figuratively, to where he stands today.
They not only need to understand all he brings to the job, but how they need to change their ways to find success when it matters most.
Berube was never gifted the way Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner or John Tavares have been gifted.
He played parts of four years of junior for four different teams. Now he has some of hockey’s brightest talents to fit into the team concept he embraces. He has been impressed so far with Matthews, in particular, how hard he works, how dedicated he is to his craft.
Now he has to find a way to build success around Matthews, with Matthews’ leadership, and the likelihood of Marner playing alongside his longtime centre who is now the team’s captain.
He says he isn’t sure how the lines will look to start the season, but that’s kind of a coaching lie. He already has written down his lines to start camp. Whether that’s how they start the season is anyone’s guess, including Berube’s.
I asked who was the best player he has ever coached and he answered within seconds.
“Chris Pronger,” Berube said. “I don’t know if people understand how great he was because he did so many things right. I don’t know if you could see all the things he did from up top, little things, tiny things, that make you better. He just knew how to play. He had incredible anticipation.”
Then without a provocation, he mentioned Alex Pietrangelo.
He was his leader, along with Ryan O’Reilly, on the Stanley Cup champions he coached in St. Louis.
“Pietrangelo wasn’t like Pronger, but he had some of the intangible qualities. He just knew how to win,” Berube said.
Pietrangelo has been the top defenceman on two Stanley Cup champions in the past five seasons.
The Leafs don’t have a Pietrangelo or a Pronger. They have Morgan Rielly. And now they have Chris Tanev and Berube couldn’t be happier about that.
“This guy brings grit to every game,” Berube said. “He brings competitiveness to every game. He does it from a checking standpoint, defending standpoint, penalty-killing standpoint. He does a lot of dirty work.
“We’ll have to see how the partner thing works out, but this guy has energy, he comes to the rink every day and when he walks in the room, everybody notices him, everybody sees him. He has that energy about him. He’s a leader and doesn’t need a letter to indicate that. He’s just a natural leader.“
And natural leadership has been something that Leafs have been missing. They tried Tavares at captain. Matthews now wears the C. They’ve had the same leadership group and a lack of on-ice leadership evident in too many years of playoff failure.
Berube has been brought to the Maple Leafs to be the difference-maker. The team has changed general managers, captains, philosophies and now, for the third time, head coaches. This actually is the first time Berube will start with a new team as head coach and not as an interim replacement.
HIs hiring was not viewed as a panacea of any kind. Until you strip away the layers and understand that this kid from Calahoo, Alta., population 143, part Cree, without natural talent, now 58 years old, has pushed his way to 17 seasons of NHL hockey, 25 more of coaching professionally: 42 years to get to this biggest stage.
His whole life in hockey has been an against-all-odds story. So don’t tell him he can’t win here.
He stopped listening to outside noise many years ago.
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2024-09-12T18:52:54Z dg43tfdfdgfd