For the first time in nearly a decade, Craig Berube does not have an NHL team to coach with the regular season set to get underway.
The 60-year-old was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs at the end of last season after finishing in the basement of the Atlantic Division with a 32-36-14 record in just his second season with the organization.
It marked the first time the Leafs, who were a win away from advancing to the Eastern Conference Final the season prior, missed the playoffs since 2016.
The downfall of the 2025-26 Maple Leafs was a product of a handful of things, including various injuries to key players, the loss of star winger Mitch Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights and captain Auston Matthews having the worst season of his 10-year NHL career.
Matthews tallied 27 goals and 26 assists - both career lows - over 60 games as the 29-year-old was sidelined with injuries for the second straight season, including suffering a torn MCL after taking a controversial hit from Anaheim Ducks defenceman Radko Gudas in mid-March, ending his season.
When he was healthy enough to play, Matthews looked far from the elite goalie scorer fans have been accustomed to seeing for most of his career.
Berube received criticism for the how he used Matthews during his two-year run with the Maple Leafs, telling TSN 1050’s First Up on Monday morning that he tried to instill a “200-foot game for everybody.”
“Yeah, I think there’s a lot of injuries with Matthews the last couple of years and stuff like that that hindered his goal scoring. But listen, I was trying to instill a 200-foot game for everybody. And if that meant he had to take more D-zone draws than he normally does because he’s playing against top lines, well, that was my thought process on it. And, you know, I stick by my guns,” Berube explained on First Up. “I mean, I think your best player, arguably your best player, has to play a 200-foot game and he’s going to have to play in the D-zone at times and take faceoffs in the defensive zone. But if you look at it, he got a lot of offensive zone starts too. I think last year I probably gave him more than any other player on our team, him or William Nylander.”
TSN 1050’s Aaron Korolnek also asked Berube about a recent Daily Faceoff article that mentioned multiple wingers on the Leafs admitted that Berube “instructed them to dump the puck in and would often fear reprisal for creative reads at the offensive blue line.”
Berube doesn’t hide the fact that he wanted his team to play a “north-south” type game.
“I had an identity going in there and I wanted to play a more north-south game and put pucks behind teams and forecheck. I believe that is a way to win in this game. You look at Carolina and Florida, even when we won in 2019, we didn’t turn pucks over. We put pucks deep and we forechecked teams and pressured teams and I wanted to instill that type of identity for the Toronto Maple Leafs,” Berube explained. “Yeah, I get it. I wasn’t trying to take their sticks out of their hands, but hey, that’s the way it goes. I got no issue with players saying if they felt like they had to dump every puck in. That’s fine. I’m not going to sit here and comment on that.”
Another player who had a disappointing season in 2025-26 was veteran defenceman Morgan Rielly.
The 32-year-old native of Vancouver, who has spent his entire 13-year career in Toronto, scored 11 goals with 25 assists over 78 games alongside a minus-18 rating.
Many believed Rielly was a prime candidate to be traded this off-season, especially after the hiring of new general manager John Chayka.
However, Rielly remains with the team entering the 2026-27 campaign. Berube is confident Rielly will bounce back this year.
“I think Morgan is a great person and a great player. Been around a long time, obviously with the Leafs his whole career and he’s a great guy and a great and has a lot of character. I feel he’s going to have a good year,” Berube said. “I think that disappointing year last year for him and he probably did what he needed to do in the summertime to get prepared to have a real good season this year. And I believe he will. I mean, he’s that type of guy, great character guy, cares about his team, cares about the Leafs. So, I believe he’s going to have a bounce-back year.”
Despite the poor season, the Jim Hiller-led Maple Leafs have a new sense of optimism surrounding them after winning the NHL Draft Lottery and selecting top prospect Gavin McKenna with the first-overall pick as well as signing some notable free agents in offensive defenceman Darren Raddysh and veteran star goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.
“I thought they did some real good things,” said Berube, who worked for TSN this summer during Free Agent Frenzy.
A 2019 Stanley Cup champion with the St. Louis Blues, Berube will likely find himself behind an NHL bench in the future, but is not focusing on that possibility at this point and time.
“Yeah, hopefully we’ll see what happens. Right now, I’m not even really worrying about it or thinking about it so much. Like I said, I’m enjoying watching games,” he said. “I’ll go out and I’ll go to games around here in the East where I live and keep in tune with hockey and people in hockey. I love the games. So, I enjoy going to games and watching you know teams play and being in contact with hockey people that are around the league.”
The Maple Leafs host the Montreal Canadiens at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday night in their season opener.
