Craig Berube Reveals Whether He Wants John Tavares and Mitch Marner Back With the Maple Leafs

With the disappointing finish to the Toronto Maple Leafs season, they are holding their end of season press conference on Tuesday morning. Reporters gathered in droves to ask pressing questions to the head coach, the players, and even potentially the GM.

It was Craig Berube's turn first to speak to the media, and while he didn't offer up any crazy anecdotes or give a hard grating teardown of the team's effort, he tried to answer as best he could to some pretty tough questions.

Among them however was that of pending free agents Mitch Marner and John Tavares. Toronto would like to keep at least Tavares, and while there is a chance they keep Marner; he's not going to come cheap.

A change might be necessary for the team to succeed, but for Craig Berube he'd rather he has the same lineup he had this season.

Marner included.

Berube was complimentary towards Marner, mentioning how much he loves to coach him and his personality allowed him to not only buy into the coach's game plan but thrive in it:

While he didn't offer the same statement to Tavares, it's pretty obvious how much respect and trust Berube has in the former captain, and the lineup would suffer more without him than with him.

But unfortunately the choice isn't up to Berube, as much as he hoped it would. It ultimately comes down to Brad Treliving's decision to re-sign Marner or not.

He's going to cost a fortune, and with minimal playoff success, can Toronto afford to spin their wheels another half decade?

You can absolutely blame Marner for his faults in the postseason, and his reputation as a regular season merchant only grows with a 102-point effort this year, but his supporting cast wasn't great.

If he had some better secondary pieces (or ones that really fit Craig Berube's system) then it could have been a much different story altogether. He still needs to perform yes, but the team as a whole was very inefficient.

Tavares for what it's worth is feeling optimistic about coming back, and once that settles itself then the rest of the pieces can fall accordingly.

One would hope that Tavares would take a hometown discount in order to stay with the team, and it certainly won't be near the $11M he makes now.

If he signs for a team friendly deal, and Marner is able to be convinced he can still win here, then perhaps Berube will get his wish.

But what's the saying again? Be careful what you wish for?

It might be a wish the head coach regrets making if he finds himself with the same result as every other season.