It was 12 years ago, almost to the day, that then-Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan renewed his embattled head coach’s contract after a disastrous season.
Randy Carlyle was gifted a two-year extension to his deal following an ugly 84-point campaign, as the Leafs new-look front office wanted time to evaluate what they had. Less than eight months later, they knew: Carlyle was fired, and Toronto (again) cratered into the league’s basement, as the rebuild that became this franchise’s Core Four era truly began.
There are a lot of parallels and history to learn from. What’s different is the names involved — new GM John Chayka instead of Shanahan, Craig Berube instead of Carlyle — and, more importantly, the urgency involved.
In 2014-15, Shanahan had the benefit of time to evaluate a roster and franchise that was already veering sharply into need-to-rebuild territory by the time he was hired to fix the mess. Chayka, however, is being charged by ownership with keeping the embers of the now-discarded “Shanaplan” alive and returning the Leafs to contention immediately.
That was not going to be possible with Berube as coach.
We don’t need to litigate all the particulars of what went wrong again — Jonas did a nice job laying many of the failings — but it’s worth appreciating this decision for what it is. It’s a relatively young, inexperienced (and controversial) new executive hire making the right call, at the expense of the $9 million still owed on the next two years of Berube’s contract.
You can call it a tap-in all you want, but if it didn’t happen, it would say a lot about where the organization was at.
The fact that Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment — which has been surly in the past about paying coaches to not coach for them (i.e., Mike Babcock) — was swayed to make this decision shows that penny-pinching isn’t going to entirely overrule common sense. (And for anyone arguing MLSE won’t have to pay Berube, given he’ll get rehired elsewhere, I’d argue his performance this past season was so damaging to his future job prospects that that’s really no guarantee.) It also shows that Chayka has autonomy to make big, costly decisions and to execute on those in short order, which is better than the alternative.
Chayka was fairly vague on the specifics behind the firing on Wednesday when he met with the media, but he did lay out that he came to this conclusion after a busy first week of meetings with his new staff. That it took just 10 days since Chayka and adviser Mats Sundin were introduced as the new brain trust is evidence of a process that works, as no functional front office could look back at last year’s trainwreck and absolve the coach of blame.
That tight timeline also, again, speaks to the urgency involved, with Toronto needing to make a ton of difficult decisions in the seven weeks between Wednesday’s firing and when free agency opens on July 1.
Chayka wisely shot down a question over how much influence the Leafs best players — led by Auston Matthews and William Nylander — had on the decision, with all of the talking-head discussion of late about the inmates running the asylum in Toronto. But given how obvious the disconnect was between Berube and most of his lineup and how his usage of his stars had diminished their impact, it’s hard to imagine he would have had any backers.
The only ones who might have been banging the table to keep the coach here would have been the bean counters; the fact that they didn’t win the day counts for something.
The Maple Leafs have to pay Craig Berube the remainder of his two-year contract ($4.5 million per season) unless he is hired elsewhere. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)
Chayka called hiring the next coach his biggest decision, but with the state of the Leafs aging, ineffective roster and perhaps the NHL’s worst-ever UFA class from which to add talent, I think we can fairly dispute that. Whether he brings in Bruce Cassidy, Jay Woodcroft, or some other established coach (and it feels highly likely it will be someone with recent NHL head-coaching experience), it probably won’t be as transformative as whatever magic Chayka needs to try to work with this lineup.
I know there’s been a debate raging out there on social media about Berube being this team’s biggest issue the past two seasons — and maybe with expected goals numbers that horrific, he was. But you can’t convince me that Scotty Bowman in his prime could take a lineup that currently has (a) a struggling, sagging Morgan Rielly and a 35-year-old Oliver Ekman-Larsson in its top four on the back end, (b) center depth that consists of Matthews and 36-year-old John Tavares and no one else, and (c) holes everywhere else down the lineup, and coach them up to the promised land.
The reality is that Chayka’s shopping list is filled with incredibly hard-to-add items, including but not limited to:
• A No. 1 defenseman who can move the puck and QB the power play
• Another top-six forward, ideally to play with Matthews
• Another minute-eating center that can handle difficult minutes
• Improved depth at basically every position, perhaps other than in goal
Unlike other teams that have filled needs like that in short order, the Leafs new GM won’t have the luxury of high picks or a deep prospect pool as currency to deal from. He doesn’t even really have much of value to trade on the roster itself, if we accept that the goal is to airlift in immediate help. His two most valuable roster players — Matthews and Nylander — have both been endorsed as part of the core by ownership and have no-movement clauses that would make getting a significant return for them difficult. Most of the movable pieces, meanwhile, aren’t going to have much value on the open market.
A lot has gone right for the Leafs over the past eight days, what with the draft lottery win and now this decision on Berube. The arrows are starting to trend in the right direction, for the first time in a calendar year.
But what comes next is going to be both much harder to navigate and just as vital for success, especially given the questions about Matthews’ future and a directive from ownership to U-turn things in time for next season. With everyone another year older and most of the roster under contract, I have my doubts that that’s even going to be possible, even with Gavin McKenna on the roster and a new face behind the bench.
Chayka has the easy wins under his belt; now comes the real challenge he was hired for.
