The Toronto Maple Leafs have stumbled of late, having lost two straight games and getting outscored by a combined 11-3; they dropped a 6-2 decision to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Wednesday and followed that up with Thursday night’s 5-1 setback on home ice against the visiting St. Louis Blues.
The loss to St. Louis stung particularly for head coach Craig Berube, who led the Blues to their first-ever Stanley Cup in 2019 but was terminated by the franchise last season.
And in a viral moment during Thursday’s game, Berube delivered a particularly scathing rant at Leafs captain Auston Matthews, grilling him on the bench in another demonstration of the new accountability he was hired to deliver to the team, via The Hockey News.
“It’s just accountability to everybody, that’s all it is. It’s nothing personal,” Berube said. “It’s just me being a coach and doing what I think is right at the time.”
As Matthews put it, it wasn’t anything that he took personally.
“I mean, I don’t know. I mean, it’s hockey. You get yelled at sometimes. Coach yells. You just kind of take it as it goes,” Matthews said. “I don’t know. There’s obviously an impact. We obviously all respect him and his presence and everything on the bench. Yeah, so it’s not anything you take personally.”
The Maple Leafs will have a chance to right the ship when they take on the division rival Boston Bruins on Saturday night at TD Garden.
Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube is known for holding all players accountable
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When the Leafs dismissed former head coach Sheldon Keefe and hired Craig Berube, they were banking on Berube’s no-nonsense, tough-minded approach to instill a new level of accountability that the franchise had been lacking.
With Berube unafraid to hold even the team captain accountable, it appears that the process is already underway.