Craig Berube's Take on Maple Leafs True Identity Raises Eyebrows Among Fans

Safe to say the debut season for Craig Berube is a rousing success. A historic season that saw him win the most games ever for a Maple Leafs coach in his first year and has a genuine shot at making the Stanley Cup Finals if they can get healthy; and have a whole lotta luck.

The team has never looked this good, with two reliable, and sometimes utterly fantastic goaltending, revamped defense, and a resurgence offensively from John Tavares and Mitch Marner's career year, but is it going to be enough?

There are still a lot of questions about the team's potential performance when it matters and there are still pieces getting accustomed with how things play out but there's little time left.

Plus, are they even going to have the players necessary to weather the storm that comes their way?

That's the exact mantra that Craig Berube laid out to media ahead of his team's game against the Sabres, and for fans: That's a horribly negative sign.

In a perfect world, there is really going to be no issues, they are getting healthy, and ensuring themselves and fans a long, successful playoff run.

But this isn't a perfect world, and this is far from a guarantee, and for Berube's team to have resilience and perseverance is both a blessing and a curse.

On the plus side, it's great to be able to see that Toronto can weather a storm and that a tough playoff series isn't going to dampen their spirits or give them any mental blocks during Round One, and even though they have a bunch of injuries, it's not really going to affect them it seems.

But it's those injuries that are the curse themselves. It's not like the team is choosing to be resilient, it's a necessity. They have lost so many games to injuries and are dealing with a ton of question marks when it comes to returns, roster placement, etc. and they don't have much time to figure it out.

They can persevere sure, but for how long? There's only seven games in a series, and if we don't see the return of names like Jake McCabe come back before Game Three, it might not be that long of a series to weather anyways.

But if this is part of their identity, they need to embrace it and use it as a weapon as opposed to a handicap.

They know how good they are, and if they can kick that into another gear to replace their lost teammates; it might be inevitable that Toronto has a long playoff run.