Craig Berube Shocks Fans with Drastic Lineup Changes Ahead of Flames Clash

After a tough 4-2 loss against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs head into Monday night against the Calgary Flames in the NHL on Prime game of the night. It's a do or die game especially given how Toronto needs every win they can muster right now.

They made some pretty big changes against Ottawa, including moving Mitch Marner off the top line for Max Domi, sitting David Kampf, and putting William Nylander on the third line.

It was a needed change and though it didn't work as well as intended; there were some positives.

So it's perplexing then why Craig Berube decided to go back to the status quo for his lineup, including one shocking and frankly, frustrating change.

It looks like the team is going back to Marner on the first line with Auston Matthews, and Pontus Holmberg comes back to the second line with Nylander and John Tavares.

It's the third line that has drawn some fair criticism. Max Domi is centering the trio; only 10 days removed from trading a first round pick and Nikita Grebenkin for Scott Laughton, who now resides on the fourth line.

It's a ridiculous bit of lineup management considering how bad and inconsistent Domi has been, and both he and Robertson should be on the fourth line while Jarnkrok and Laughton get bumped up.

Resting David Kampf for a game isn't a big deal considering he played a ton this season and deserved a bit of a break, but to sit arguably your most consistent defensive forward on the bottom half while Holmberg and Domi still play is a bit egregious, especially for a team that wants to win.

You can't just give up on a lineup after one game, then go back to what's been inconsistent for months. The team needs to split up their stars more, which could look like this:

Knies - Matthews - Nylander

Laughton - Marner - McMann

Robertson - Tavares - Jarnkrok

Lorentz - Kampf - Domi

Giving Nylander a chance to run the top line with Matthews and Knies will lead to some great offensive chances, especially with how quick Nylander can gain entry into the zone, and Matthews being able to distribute and Knies able to provide the size.

Laughton gets to play on the wing with Marner, a position he's familiar with and also provides Toronto the opportunity to give the star forward a chance to play pivot (where he has a career 43.7% face-off win percentage) and give the speedy Bobby McMann more opportunities to score.

Tavares has struggled at the 2C and needs to be demoted, at least to give his brain a bit of a reprieve. He and Calle Jarnkrok can play solid defense while Nick Robertson can utilize Tavares' skillset to hopefully get his goal-scoring back up to snuff.

Max Domi is demoted to the fourth line, and needs the defensively sound Kampf and Lorentz to cover for his shortcomings, and he can provide some sporadic offense, but it gives Toronto more of a defensive balance across all four lines.

Whatever Craig Berube is doing with going back to his old ways isn't what Toronto needs.

It's just leading Toronto to the same results as always: First round failure.