Is It Inevitable Berube Is Gone From the Maple Leafs?
You look at the Toronto Maple Leafs this year, and it’s hard not to just sit back and wonder what else we were expecting here?The season went off the rails early and never really found its footing again. This is a team that finished close to the bottom of the NHL final standings. That’s not just “a bad year,” that’s a full-on free fall. The trade deadline didn’t fix anything either. If anything, it felt like good players were lost with little more than a shrug.
Then the GM gets fired, and now the coach is almost certainly next in line, just waiting for the formalities. Around here, that’s usually how these things go—slow motion until suddenly it isn’t.
Will the Maple Leafs lose their top-five draft pick?
And then there’s the draft pick situation. Of course, there’s a scenario where Boston ends up holding their first-round pick. Because why wouldn’t there be? That’s the kind of season it’s been. Sprinkle in the ongoing Auston Matthews uncertainty—whether it’s real noise or just background static—and you get that familiar Toronto feeling. This is a team that always seems to be one step away from calm but never actually arrives there.
Now, to be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom, even if it felt like it was on most nights.
At the time, the Berube hire made some sense.
The Craig Berube hire? At the time, it made sense. The team lacked pushback, and he was a tough coach, structured guy, all that. But it just never really clicked here. And honestly, at this point, you could argue that almost anyone stepping in next would qualify as an upgrade. That’s not really a compliment or an indictment; it’s just where things sit. Sometimes a reset is less about finding the perfect answer and more about stopping the bleeding.
Same idea with the GM spot. Brad Treliving came in, tried to steer things in a different direction, but the results never really followed. Still, there’s at least movement now. Keith Pelley saying the next hire is coming soon—no long drawn-out search like originally suggested—that actually matters. For this organization, “decisive” is usually not the word you use. “Eventually” is more like it.
Another chapter of the Maple Leafs book is about to be written.
So here we are again, wondering if this is just another chapter in the same book. New voices coming, old problems lingering, and a core that may or may not still be fully aligned with the future. Is it all but inevitable? Well… in Toronto, it usually feels like it is.