Craig Berube breaks his silence after Leafs firing and refuses to take accountability

Craig Berube admitted he wanted a completely different look from the Maple Leafs during his tenure and refused to take any responsibility for their last-place finish.

When the Maple Leafs hired Berube in the summer of 2024, it was meant as a way to give the team a proven winner behind the bench who's style draws a lot of criticism for its slow, plodding style but it's one that does come with a Stanley Cup.

However, while it worked magnificently in 2024-25, that production fell off a cliff last year and after Toronto finished last in the Atlantic, it was time for the organization to make a change. In came Jim Hiller, who has promised to offer a more exciting and fast-paced brand of hockey - a huge contrast to Berube.

Craig Berube refuses to take accountability for his system

But Berube is standing firm in his belief that his system works. Call it stubborn or call it ignorant, one thing is for certain: Berube still thinks it was the right decision.

Speaking on TSN's First Up program, Berube refused to say that last year was a failure, and instead focused on why he wanted everyone - from Auston Matthews to Calle Jarnkrok - to be a full 200-foot player:

I had an identity going in there, and I wanted to play a more north-south game and put pucks behind teams and forecheck. I believe that is the way to win in this game. You look at Carolina and Florida, and even when we won in 2019, we didn't turn pucks over.

I get it, I wasn't trying to take their sticks out of their hands, but it's the way it goes. I got no issue with players saying if they felt like they had to dump every puck in. That's fine.

I wanted to instil a 200 foot game in everybody.

While it is admirable for Berube to want to go back to a style that was successful, you have a completely different contrast between St. Louis in 2019 and Toronto in 2025.

Why Berube's style was never going to succeed long-term in Toronto

The personnel in Toronto and St. Louis were night and day, and in a much different situation. The Blues were a team full of gritty, hard-nosed players who were able to contribute offensively but had a defense-first mindset.

The Maple Leafs had superstar after superstar who were able to change the course of a game but unable to do so with so much extra responsibility. There's a reason 60-goal scorers aren't forced into high-pressure defensive situations - it is a weakness, and the numbers don't lie:

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Matthews by far was the most defensively dependent upon star, and why he needed to take almost 46% of the defensive draws when the team employed Scott Laughton and Nic Roy is a bit perplexing. That first year had everything fall into place: Great goaltending, an incredible team effort, and a system that seemed to have merit once again.

But once that luck ran out and Berube's system was exposed, it ended up in complete failure for the Maple Leafs. Don't tell the former Leafs coach that though, because he's going to forever argue that chasing the puck is more important than chasing a Stanley Cup.

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