Why is Craig Berube still the Maple Leafs’ head coach?

No Toronto Maple Leafs head coach has survived an eight game losing streak. I guess that’s not true. Peter Horachek survived his 11-game winless streak in 2015 but he had a couple of extenuating circumstances aided him. First, the Maple Leafs were actively tanking for a chance to draft Connor McDavid at that point, and secondly, Randy Carlyle had already been fired as Head Coach earlier in the season and canning the interim coach in a year where the bottom of the league was the target wouldn’t have made a ton of sense.

Sheldon Keefe was obviously a postseason decision by Brad Treliving and certainly not a decision based on failure to deliver in the regular season, but Wilson, Carlyle, and Babcock were all let go before it getting to as bad as it has been with Craig Berube in this stretch.

• Mike Babcock had a 9-10-4 record at the time he was let go and had lost his last six games.
• Randy Carlyle had a 21-16-3 record and two wins in his last nine games before being let go (his last two games were losses.)
• Ron Wilson’s situation is the closest to Craig Berube’s as he made it to the 64-game mark in the season when he was let go. He had a 29-28-7 record but had lost his last six games. Nearly identical, but Berube is slightly worse when it comes to the losing streak and record.

You have to go back to 1996 when Pat Burns had just one win in his last 11 games with the Maple Leafs and a record of 25-30-10 to see the Maple Leafs waiting longer to fire a coach than they recently had with Berube.

Maybe the difference is Brad Treliving. Both of Brad Treliving’s in-season coach firings came after the outgoing coach picked up one last win. Geoff Ward won three of his last nine games, including his last one before being let go, and Bill Peters (who had the added complication of Akim Aliu’s disclosure of Peters’ racist behaviour) lost six in a row before winning his final game with the Flames and being let go.

Perhaps Brad Treliving wanted to give Berube one last “W.” He got that, now he has two. The other thing to consider is that neither of Treliving’s in-season replacements came this late into the season. Like Brad Treliving’s final season in Calgary it was perfectly clear that Darryl Sutter would not be returning as the head coach, though Treliving would be gone as the Flames GM before that time, with a “mutual agreement” to not renew his expiring contract.

There may also be a bit of that “lame duck” approach that the Leafs took with Peter Horachek as an interim coach and with the team’s fate being accepted, running out the clock on the year is the preference. That’s not a good look as there is still enough time to see what happens if this team particularly struggling veterans like Morgan Rielly or Max Domi, and youthful players like Nick Robertson and Easton Cowan can thrive away from Berube.

The bigger worry is that this is about money and that money is going to dictate that Craig Berube will be back as the Leafs’ head coach next season. MLSE was thrilled about the amount that needed to be paid out to Mike Babcock and weren’t eager to let Sheldon Keefe depart with too much term left on his deal either. With Berube having a couple of seasons remaining on his deal and likely not being as in demand as Keefe was after his departure, the Maple Leafs will need to eat that salary.

The Maple Leafs eating salary might not seem an issue for a club with the highest valuation in the league, but that’s where the dots need to be connected back to Rogers. Rogers just spent a lot on acquiring the Bell share of MLSE. That wasn’t cheap. Rogers also just spent a lot to retain the national NHL TV rights in Canada. That wasn’t cheap either. And while money is certainly still being printed by MLSE and Rogers in general, the lack of Leafs playoff games impacts the bottom line on both MLSE and Sportsnet and multi-million dollar hit isn’t something they are excited to absorb when their businesses might not be hitting their targets.

You could argue the shortsightedness of this as Berube is hindering the organization from hitting future revenue targets, but there are a lot more variables that need to be considered there versus sticking with the devil you know.

Given how unexpectedly badly things have gone this season, it seems unlikely that the Maple Leafs will stick with Craig Berube beyond this season and while he shouldn’t shoulder all the blame (the rest of the Hockey Operations Department and the roster own equal shares of this), so I’m not sure how much of organizational frugality comes into play.

What is interesting about Berube being around is the Maple Leafs are passing up an opportunity at the highest level to say that this season was unacceptable, and they aren’t going to wait to fix it. Firing Berube is a chance for Brad Treliving to show his intent to fix things, and perhaps since we aren’t seeing him intervene, that decision could be out of his control. The move reengages some of the right players and sends a message to those who have burned through two coaches in relatively short order.

The final thing that needs to be considered is how if the plan is to let Craig Berube go at the end of the season, and you’d have to imagine he suspects a strong possibility of it happening, is it fair to him to have him go through the final games and potentially spend time on developing offseason plans for players and put in work for planning for next season when it is already clear there won’t be another season behind the Maple Leafs bench for him? If Keith Pelley is already committed to making a change, the right thing to do is to begin that process as soon as possible.

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