The Maple Leafs have interviewed former Blues coach Craig Berube and ex-Kings bench boss Todd McLellan, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman confirmed on Monday’s “32 Thoughts” podcast (audio link). Adding onto heavy speculation in recent days, it appears they’re the favorites to take over as head coach in Toronto after Sheldon Keefe was fired Thursday. Berube was interviewed when Toronto’s search began over the weekend, while McLellan’s interview was slated for today, per Friedman.
Berube has also been linked to the Devils’ and Senators’ coaching vacancies this summer, but New Jersey’s attention has ironically drifted toward Keefe, and Ottawa ended up hiring Travis Green on a four-year contract. He’d spent parts of the past six seasons coaching the Blues, including winning the 2019 Stanley Cup as their interim bench boss, before being fired after a 13-14-1 start to this season.
Outside of the 2019 run, Berube’s Blues only managed to win a playoff series on one other occasion, taking down the Wild in six games in the first round in 2022. The blame is far from being square on Berube for that, though. Their aging defense has lacked identity and consistent puck-moving prowess for the past couple of seasons, resulting in St. Louis missing the playoffs entirely in consecutive campaigns for the first time since 2010 and 2011. St. Louis ended up going with interim replacement Drew Bannister as Berube’s full-time replacement after he led them to a 30-19-5 record in the last few months of the season.
Berube has what few other available coaches on this market do – a Stanley Cup ring. Only Joel Quenneville carries that distinction among names that have been truly bandied about in this year’s carousel, and he’s still not eligible for work in the league due to his involvement in the Blackhawks’ organizational cover-up of a 2010 sexual assault incident involving former video coach Brad Aldrich. Claude Julien won with the Bruins in 2011 and isn’t technically retired, and Dan Bylsma (Penguins, 2009) is still going strong as the head coach of the Kraken’s AHL affiliate, but neither has truly had their name connected to any vacancies thus far.
He had a .597 points percentage in the regular season with St. Louis, north of McLellan’s .550 run with the Kings over the past five years. Like Berube, McLellan was sacked midseason with a 23-15-10 record, influenced by a 3-7-5 slide in January.
McLellan, despite boasting over twice as many games coached as Berube, has more muted playoff success, though. His teams haven’t advanced to a conference final since the Sharks in 2011, and he failed to get out of the first round in two playoff appearances with the Kings. He has a career 42-46 record in postseason play – perhaps his most disappointing discrepancy coming during his time in San Jose (.637 regular-season points percentage, .484 playoff win percentage).
So the GM gets fired and now the coach is fired. At what point do the players actually making the big money get held accountable for the results?
never apparently