Who does the blame fall on for the Toronto Maple Leafs’ recent struggles?
TORONTO – There’s a certain on-edge feeling to the Toronto Maple Leafs right now.
What made this feeling apparent wasn’t Craig Berube putting a lifeless 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals on the players. It wasn’t William Nylander struggling to recognize the feeling he’s experiencing with the Leafs’ current slide. It wasn’t even Toronto firing Marc Savard, a clear sacrificial lamb amidst calls for change.
It was how, during a Tuesday afternoon showdown between the Leafs and the Pittsburgh Penguins, Berube and Brad Treliving had to frequently mention that the two were on the same page. Ahead of the game, Treliving mentioned it when asked about how much say Berube had in firing Savard. Then Treliving said that Derek LaLonde would run the power play, while Berube said it would be a staff effort. After the game, which ended up being one of the Leafs more well-rounded efforts with a 6-3 win, Berube still needed to clarify those comments that differed between himself and Treliving, to make sure everybody knew that they were on the same page.
Now, the power play coach situation itself isn’t an issue. With Steve Sullivan now promoted to the role, we have our answer. But the fact that, even amidst a solid win from the team, there was some apparent disconnect from Treliving and Berube that they needed to get their stories straight feels like something not seen from the Leafs since before any of this current core arrived. It’s not Salutegate or anything from that nightmare 2014-15 season, but the growing tension in Leafland since the end of last season feels closer to that than anything else seen in recent years.
It’s certainly not surprising that tensions are high. After dropping the final two home games in the second round to the Florida Panthers by a score of 6-1, and Mitch Marner’s infamous exit in the summer, the Leafs were already in hot water. But now as they sit in last place in the Atlantic Division, second last in the Eastern Conference, five points out of a playoff spot and amidst a 22-game stretch with only eight wins, it’s hit a boiling point.
So how did it get to this point? Ask anyone on the team, and they’ll tell you the same thing: everyone’s to blame.
“It falls on all of us,” said Treliving ahead of Tuesday’s game. “It falls on the players. It falls on all of us, coaches, management, everybody in all facets of our game needs to be better.”
“It’s on everybody,” said Berube in the same press conference when asked how much Savard’s firing is on Auston Matthews and William Nylander’s recent struggles. “Like I said, it’s on me, I’m the head coach.”
To some extent, that’s correct. A situation can’t get this bad without multiple people failing. But it can’t be dismissed so easily either. There has to be some aspect of the team that is causing more issues than the rest of them. If it keeps getting worse and the time comes where more change is required, who should take the blame?
The players
To say the Leafs’ players have lost the good will of fans at this point would be an understatement. With the Matthews era now in its’ 10th season, playoff disappointment has plagued it, with the big-name players consistently underperforming in those big moments. Toronto has run out of patience with the core, something that has already chased Marner out of town.
Right now, the Leafs’ core are putting up “playoff-like” performances. Before his four-point game against Pittsburgh, Nylander hadn’t scored in 11 consecutive games, only garnering five assists in that span. John Tavares has just five points in 15 games after a hot start to the season. Matthew Knies has just two assists in his last nine games.
And then there’s Matthews, who isn’t in nearly as bad of a slump right now (a four-game pointless streak after a stretch of nine points in nine games), but has slumped for the better part of two seasons now. Before the 2024-25 season, Matthews was scoring at a 53-goal 82-game pace over the course of his career, never dipping below a 40-goal pace even in his worst seasons. But in the last two seasons, that pace is at 39 goals.
There are plenty of concerns surrounding Matthews’ performance. Are the injury issues that plagued him last season still around? Did he really need Marner that much to score goals? Is he already past his prime at 28 years old?
The performance from the entire core has led to justifiable frustration from fans and media, with many believing that the blame shouldn’t always fall on the coach, especially as this core is now on their third. But you forget how often some cores need to cycle through coaches to find the right one. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are currently on their fifth and seventh coach with the Edmonton Oilers. Barry Trotz was Alex Ovechkin’s fifth coach before he finally won his Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals. Scottie Bowman was Steve Yzerman’s sixth coach before he won his first Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings. Sometimes a coach just can be a wrong fit for a certain core, and you need to find the right one to make it all work.
That’s not to say the players should escape blame here. There are continued issues with this group that need to be solved, and maybe this group just can’t get things done in the playoffs. But moving on from the group is also the most expensive option, and the one most likely to backfire. All their contracts are either on the pricier side and might be seen as overpayments compared to current performances (Matthews, Nylander, Morgan Rielly) or are actually good investments and are the contracts this team needs right now (Tavares, Knies).
Besides, there are plenty of options for coaches and general managers on the market. There are very few players at the level of Matthews or Nylander at their best, or even at the level of Tavares for both his age and contract value.
The coach
It’s weird to see a head coach on such a hot seat after just a season and a half at the helm, especially when his first season saw the Leafs win the division for just the second time since 2000, and win a playoff series for only the second time since 2004. But that’s the nature of business in a hockey hotbed like Toronto, especially when the team has underperformed as much as it has.
Normally this would be where the blame starts to fall on the players, but the underlying numbers have been there the entire time to indicate that Berube has been a bigger issue than one would think. In 2024-25, the Leafs were 19th in 5v5 expected goal share at 49.39%, the first time in the Matthews era that the Leafs were below 50%. They spent all season playing like a fringe playoff team but were carried by the second-best 5v5 save percentage in the league.
Now that the goaltending veil has fallen, the issue has become much worse. Not only has regression hit the Leafs hard, their on-ice performance has slipped, as they’re 24th in 5v5 xG% with 48.41%. While last year’s team was at least good defensively, particularly at protecting the house and keeping most chances to the outside, that’s all gone away this year, as they’re 20th in 5v5 expected goals against per 60 minutes.
So if the coach brought in to provide defensive structure is seeing his team fail to perform that defensive structure, what is he providing? He’s also supposed to be acting as more of a vocal presence in the locker room than a systemic presence on the ice, but he’s already losing the room as seen with his comments after the 4-0 loss to Washington. His offensive style was supposed to be the type that would benefit the team in the playoffs, but come crunch time, the Leafs scored four goals in the final four games against the Panthers.
Which leads me to another point regarding Matthews. There’s one other event that has coincided with Matthews’ two-year slump: the hiring of Berube. A coach known for his defensive structure and chip-and-chase offensive style comes in, and suddenly a player best known for scoring through sustained offensive pressure struggles? That can’t be more than a coincidence. Injuries and Marner’s absence may play a role as well, but these issues persisted last season when Marner was on the team.
Dom Luszczyszyn of the Athletic broke it down better here, but the reality is that Berube may be having a bigger impact on Matthews’ scoring issues than we think. Berube’s system relies on getting the puck low and grinding their opponent down to generate offense. In comparison, Sheldon Keefe’s system relied on working the puck high in the zone, moving it between Matthews and Marner to draw the defense up from the slot, and then find an opening in the slot or in front of the net to generate offense. Where do you think is a better way for Matthews to generate offense, with space in the slot, or battling for shots and deflections in front of the net?
Luszczyszyn also pointed out another interesting note in his piece. After looking at the data of Matthews’ goals under Berube and before Berube, he noticed that Matthews was losing close to a foot of space on average on his goals. That may not seem like much, but space is everything for a goal scorer, and Matthews’ game thrives on creating space for himself. It wouldn’t be surprising if that’s also why he’s lost about 14 goals per 82 games. Sure, Marner also does a good job at creating space, so his departure impacts that this season, but it was still an issue when Marner was here.
If a coaching system is making that much of an impact on a player’s performance, especially as one as talented as Matthews, perhaps they should be getting more of the blame than the players, no matter how much patience has been run out with this Leafs core. At the very least, bringing in a coach with a system more equipped to the talent of these players would be a great way to save the season.
But will that happen? Treliving has backed Berube as recently as Tuesday and isn’t looking into hypothetical situations of when he may fire the coach if things worsen. It sounds like a decision on Berube may come too late to salvage the season, or at the very least, that Treliving may have to go down with the ship if it comes to that.
The general manager
If there was one word that I would use to describe Treliving’s tenure with the Leafs thus far, it’s inconsistent. For every good move, there’s a bad move of equal (or worse) magnitude. And for a team that’s as capped out as the Leafs are, they can only afford so many bad moves.
To Treliving’s credit, he gave the Leafs more offensive depth in the 2023 offseason by adding Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi, two players who even gave Matthews a successful line away from Marner. In the summer of 2024, Treliving bolstered the blueline with Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Last summer, when the free agent market dried up quickly, Treliving was savvy enough to look for buy-low options like Mattias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy and Dakota Joshua. More recently, with the Leafs in desperate need of a puck-mover on the blueline, Treliving grabbed Troy Stecher on waivers. Has every move worked out perfectly? Of course not, but you could see the logic in the moves and why it made sense, and how it could still work out even now for the players still around.
But then there’s the bad. At the 2023-24 trade deadline, Treliving’s first attempt to bolster the blueline was trading for Ilya Lyubushkin and Joel Edmundson, who struggled against the Boston Bruins in the playoffs. The Leafs GM has made several signings (Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg, Jani Hakinpaa) who were revealed to have long-term injury concerns that existed at the time of those signings. The 2024-25 deadline saw Treliving deal two first-round picks for Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, two players that had seen their games take steps back in recent seasons prior to the trade, and Berube has only ever deployed them in fourth-line and bottom-pair roles. Oh, and Treliving also has a love for signing depth players to term (Reaves, Domi, David Kampf, Simon Benoit, Steven Lorentz), a cardinal sin in the salary-cap era and something that’s already backfired on him. While you could add Marner leaving the team to the mix, that seems like an issue that predates Treliving.
The good so far has improved the team in the short term, but the bad has had long-term effects on the team. The Leafs don’t have a first-round pick for the next two seasons (unless they have a top-five selection in 2026), and only have three picks in the first four rounds. That’s an expected spot to be in for a consistent playoff team, but the Leafs aren’t playing like one this season, and the result of those picks being dealt (Carlo, Laughton, Maccelli, Connor Dewar) haven’t worked out so far or at all.
Even the good moves haven’t necessarily panned out. Bertuzzi was another unproductive depth player come playoff time. Tanev is in year two of a six-year contract and has struggled (when he’s not injured). Maccelli, Roy and Joshua have yet to find a consistent role with the team halfway through the season.
It’s all been a collective buildup that has now put the Leafs in between a rock and a hard place. They can’t commit to a rebuild or quick retool because they don’t have the draft capital for it to be effective. So now they have to double down on a group that hasn’t played like a playoff team this season, and possibly throw even more draft pick and prospect capital to bring in new players to improve it as a sunk-cost fallacy and dig the long-term hole even deeper.
It’s still too early to determine what long-term move the Leafs should make, but spending too long of a time in lingo is also a risky strategy when the possibility of sending a top-10 pick to a division rival in the Bruins (hello Tyler Seguin) hangs in the balance. They have to commit to a retool or getting into the playoffs eventually, but it’s also hard to trust either being done well if the GM that put them in this situation is still at the helm.
At the end of the day, the parroted message around the team about the blame being on everyone isn’t wrong. The current mess the Leafs find themselves in is on everyone. The players need to play better, the coaches systems aren’t working, and the general manager has struggled to bring in the right players for this group.
But while the players can only be let off the hook for their mistakes so many times, this one might not be on them as much as you think. The evidence shows that the Leafs’ current situation has been a death by a thousand cuts at the hands of misstep after misstep by Berube and Treliving.
That’s not to say they should be fired on the spot, but they need to start practicing what they’re preaching and hold themselves accountable. They need to find out where they have done wrong and improve. If they can’t adjust, then maybe you start to look for other options at those positions.
All advanced stats courtesy of Evolving Hockey.
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