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The book on the 40th coach in Toronto’s NHL franchise history is that he’s not one to forgive a failed effort easily. Whether Craig Brerube does hold the star power on the Maple Leafs and the rest of the team more accountable than his predecessor, especially in the playoffs, remains to be seen, but first the new man has to get up to speed with his new charges. General manager Brad Treliving confirmed he picked the name atop most lists of candidates after last week’s firing of Sheldon Keefe, hiring the 58-year-old Berube. It’s almost five years to the day Berube won a Stanley Cup by shaking up the St. Louis Blues as a mid-season replacement. Unlike when he accepted his last assignment, Berube inherits a team that finished with more than 100 points the past three years, with NHL goal leader Auston Matthews and two right wingers who were within 100 points this year and last in William Nylander and Mitch Marner. But getting more from the Leafs in clutch post-season moments, particularly Marner and Matthews, will be what fans want to see a year from now. Berube was let go by the Blues this past December as their Cup roster thinned out through age, injuries, trades and free agency. But he’s best recalled for winning a title without a recognized franchise player and steady, but not spectacular goaltending, a game plan based as much on skill players accepting defensive roles as scoring themselves. Berube might have kept the Blues in the Cup hunt had COVID-19 not disrupted the whole NHL the following year. They stayed competitive, but his often heavy-handed approach had run its course by last December when the team lost four straight and dipped below .500. Craig Berube or Todd McLellan will put Leafs on notice says ex-NHLer Kelly Chase https://torontosun.com/sports/maple-leaf-sports-and-entertainment-unveil-latest-steps-in-reimagination-aimed-at-enhancing-arena For all of Keefe’s efforts to pry the most of his Core Four, the three aforementioned players and captain John Tavares, the Leafs as a whole bought into playoff hockey a little too late after getting down 3-1 to Boston. It turned into the sixth time they’d lost a Game 5 or 7 of an opening round series since 2017, the fourth under Keefe. Nicknamed ‘Chief’, with 3,360 NHL penalty minutes in almost 1,200 NHL games, he brings a lot of that pugnacious attitude to the job. “He’s going to ask you to play hard or you won’t play,” former NHLer and Blues’ broadcaster Kelly Chase told the Sun last week when Berube’s name came up as a replacement for Keefe. “And that (controversy) only has to happen a couple of times in the winter for it to be understood by every player come spring. “He’s brutally honest. He went to Alex Steen in our Cup year and said, ‘I want you to take a lesser role, but it’s going to be important’. He played him with Ivan Barbashev and Oskar Sundqvist. People were calling it the third or fourth line, but they were huge. So, he might go to Marner and say, ‘I’m moving you down because this other player is doing better. You want to play more? Play harder.’ ” Treliving will just have to hope Berube can find a level of comfort in Canada’s most intense hockey market compared to the game’s often secondary status in St. Louis. But Berube did start out with the Philadelphia Flyers as their head coach ten years ago (75-58-28 with one playoff appearance in two years) and after his Cup appearance, knows how to survive a large media scrum. Just don’t expect the long and detailed answers Keefe liked to provide in explaining his methods. Part-Indigenous Cree, Berube was born in Calahoo, Alta., a reserve community with less than 200 people. Undrafted, he debuted with the Flyers with two fights and eventually played for both his home province Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. In between, he was a Leaf for 40 games, traded from the Oilers in the Glenn Anderson-Grant Fuhr acquisition and to the Flames when Toronto acquired Doug Gilmour in the record 10-player swap. Craig Berube or Todd McLellan will put Leafs on notice says ex-NHLer Kelly Chase https://torontosun.com/sports/maple-leaf-sports-and-entertainment-unveil-latest-steps-in-reimagination-aimed-at-enhancing-arena “I’m going to wait for an NHL job and see what happens,” Berube told Flyers’ blogger Wayne Fish after being let go in St. Louis and returning to the Philly area to be closer to his three children by his first marriage. “It doesn’t matter where. I’m sure I have a shot. It all boils down to talking to a team, talking to the GM, the ownership. “If they believe in your message, if they like what you’re saying. In the interview process, if it’s a good fit for me and a good fit for them, probably something will get done.” It was believed Treliving met face-to-face with seasoned NHL coach Todd McLellan as part of the interview process. Another well-travelled coach, Gerard Gallant, was in the mix, but Berube was named before Rod Brind’Amour’s future with the Carolina Hurricanes was determined, after their Thursday-night elimination by the New York Rangers. Berube coming to the Leafs, after being briefly courted by New Jersey, shifts the coaching spotlight to vacancies with the Devils, Winnipeg Jets, Seattle Kraken and San Jose Sharks. It remains to be seen if Joel Quenneville gets clearance from the NHL to resume his career after three years on the sidelines. lhornby@postmedia.com X:@sunhornby

Now that the Leafs have hired Craig Berube as the 32nd coach in franchise history, his goal will be to become the next Scotty Bowman. Bear with us here. We haven’t got off to a head start on the May long weekend libations. That will come soon enough. Bowman, the Hall of Fame legend who is properly regarded as the best coach to stand behind any NHL bench, won a record nine Stanley Cups as coach, starting in 1973 with the Montreal Canadiens and ending in 2002 with the Detroit Red Wings. Bowman hoisted five Cups as coach of the Canadiens, did it once with the Pittsburgh Penguins and three times with the Red Wings. All of this is pertinent in regard to Berube, whose hiring was announced officially by the Leafs on Friday afternoon, for a simple reason: Bowman is the only man since 1967-68, the season that marked the NHL’s initial charge into expansion, who has coached more than one team to a Stanley Cup. And Bowman, because he has no equals, just happened to do it with three teams. Some excellent coaches — Fred Shero, Al Arbour, Glen Sather and more recently Joel Quenneville, Darryl Sutter, Mike Sullivan and Jon Cooper — have hoisted the Cup more than once. But in all cases, each did so with the same team. There’s a long list of coaches who have won the Cup once and not had that same success when they’ve gone on to coach another team. We won’t recall all of them here, but the list includes Ken Hitchcock, John Tortorella, Mike Babcock and Claude Julien. Peter Laviolette could do it this spring with the New York Rangers, as he won the Cup in 2006 coaching the Carolina Hurricanes. The fact that Berube won the Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019, righting what had been a last-place NHL ship in January of that year, doesn’t matter much. Men regarded as being a better coach than Berube weren’t able to win again in another market. What evidence is there to indicate that Berube will buck what has been, to be honest, a rather surprising trend in the NHL? What is there to say that Berube will guide the Leafs to their first Cup since 1967? After the Blues won five years ago, led by the best overall performance of goalie Jordan Binnington’s NHL career, Berube couldn’t take the Blues to anything approaching the Cup final again. The Blues lost in the first round in 2020 and 2021, lost in the second round in 2022 and didn’t make the playoffs in 2023. Fairly run-of-the-mill stuff. Berube hung on until he was fired in St. Louis last Dec. 12. Of course Leafs general manager Brad Treliving did his due diligence in the search, which kicked into earnest when Sheldon Keefe was fired on May 9. That’s what a GM is supposed to do. Somewhere along the way, Treliving decided that the Leafs have a greater chance of winning with Berube than with Todd McLellan, who was thought to be the other frontrunner. But there are more than a few members of Leafs Nation who would be disappointed with the idea that Treliving came to his decision before knowing 100% what the coaching future held for Rod Brind’Amour. When the Hurricanes were eliminated by the New York Rangers from the playoffs on Thursday night, an understandable course of action the part of Treliving would have been to hold off on any coaching decision until the hockey world knew whether Brind’Amour was going to return to Carolina. No such luck if you preferred Brind’Amour as a possible coach of the Leafs. With the Leafs, Berube is going to coach a player — Auston Matthews — with the kind of talent he never had in St. Louis or in a two-year stint as coach of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2013-15. With the Flyers under Berube, Wayne Simmonds led the club in goal-scoring with 29 in 2013-14 and 28 in 2014-15. In St. Louis, the best goal-scorer with Berube as coach was Jordan Kyrou, who had 37 goals in 2022-23. The relationship that Berube, whose contract reportedly is for four years, must build with Matthews will be crucial to any success the Leafs will have. How that unfolds will be fascinating to observe. NHL Notes: Let the Rod Brind’Amour coaching sweepstakes begin ... Brad Marchand better, says Sam Bennett hit part of playoff war Maple Leafs' prospect Easton Cowan caps OHL playoff ride with MVP honours Just as fascinating will be Berube’s relationship with William Nylander. Keefe and Nylander went back to their days together with the Toronto Marlies, and Keefe knew which Nylander buttons needed to be pushed. Include Mitch Marner here if he is back next season. Also, like anyone else, we’re curious to see how Berube’s no-nonsense approach will work with this Leafs group. Will holding players more accountable than Keefe did (at least publicly) result in long playoff runs and eventually a Cup? Will it make the Leafs better than the 100-point team they were annually in the regular season under Keefe? When a new coach is hired, there’s good feelings always emanate from the team, and we would expect nothing less when the news conference introducing Berube is held on Tuesday morning at the Ford Performance Centre. With Berube, no guarantee about a possible Cup victory in Toronto can be made just because he has done it before. Berube is a new voice, sure. But we can’t say now he’s going to be a better one in replacing Keefe, and have a greater impact, because we don’t know that yet. We’re intrigued to see what the next several years bring. Just don’t be surprised if the first line in this column will be one of the few times that Berube is mentioned in the same sentence as Scotty Bowman. tkoshan@postmedia.com X: @koshtorontosun

In the coming days, teams keen on pursuing Rod Brind’Amour as coach will find out how serious he and the Carolina Hurricanes are about him staying on Tobacco Road. After the sting of losing a late lead Thursday, falling 5-3 and being eliminated in six games by the New York Rangers, talk will turn to getting Brind’Amour’s name on a multi-year deal. Until then, his undeclared status is creating some drama with other vacancies around the National Hockey League. Chris Kreider’s natural hat trick on Thursday ended the Canes’ shot at becoming just the fifth team to rebound from a deficit of 0-3 in a best-of-seven series. But ownership and management put a lot of resources via trades into getting the Canes through the opening rounds, without success. Now the polite assurances that a deal would eventually get done as Brind’Amour’s final year elapsed have to be settled. While the Maple Leafs are taking a good look at Craig Berube to replace Sheldon Keefe, they were no doubt waiting to see which way the wind is blowing with Brind’Amour. Joel Quenneville being stuck in limbo with the league yet to determine his future might also be delaying the final call in Toronto and elsewhere. Quenneville would also be high on the list of clubs such as San Jose, Seattle, Winnipeg and New Jersey, but there has been no official indication from commissioner Gary Bettman when he’ll be allowed to work again. He was shelved three years ago for perceived indifference during the Kyle Beach scandal with the Chicago Blackhawks, which cost him his position in Florida. Todd McLellan flew from Los Angeles, his last post, to be interviewed in Toronto this week, but could also get attention from the Devils, while in the East after they apparently passed on Berube and got Toronto’s permission to speak to Keefe. Former Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft is getting some mentions, too. After being let go by St. Louis earlier this season, Berube returned to the Philadelphia area, where he’d played and first served as an NHL head coach with the Flyers, telling blogger Wayne Fish: “I’m going to wait for an NHL job and see what happens. “It doesn’t matter where. I’m sure I have a shot. It all boils down to talking to a team, talking to the GM, the ownership. If they believe in your message, if they like what you’re saying. In the interview process, if it’s a good fit for me and a good fit for them, probably MARCHAND FEELING BETTER An extra day off in the Boston–Florida series could allow Bruins’ captain Brad Marchand to get back in the lineup Friday night’s Game 6. But Marchand insists his desire to extend the series will out-weigh any wish to retaliate against Sam Bennett, who was accused of camouflaging a sucker punch in the collision that rang Marchand’s bell in Game 3. “He plays hard, he’s an extremely physical player, great player for the group,” Marchand said in describing Bennett to reporters in Boston at practice on Thursday. “I think he got away with a shot (not called by either referee in the game or subject to NHL Player Safety review), but I’m not going to complain. S**t happens. That’s part of especially playoff hockey. I’ve been on the other side of a lot of plays. It sucks to be on the other side. But it is what it is. “People don’t want to say it, but part of the playoffs is trying to hurt every player on the other team. That’s just a fact of the game. Any time you can get an advantage, it’s going to help your team win. That’s part of the benefit of having a physical group. That’s why you see teams go the distance with a big defence corps and physical teams (and) why you rarely see teams that are small and skilled go far, because they get hurt.” JUNIOR SWEEPERS KEEPERS The three champions in the WHL, OHL and QMJHL lowered the broom in their respective league finals this week, the first time all three championship rounds ended in four-game sweeps. On Wednesday, the London Knights defeated the Oshawa Generals 7-1, winning all four meetings and their first league title since 2016. Later in the evening out west, the Moose Jaw Warriors beat the Portland Winterhawks 4-2, rolling to their first Ed Chynoweth Cup. A day earlier, the Drummondville Voltigeurs edged Baie-Comeau Drakkar 4-3 to run the table for the Gilles Courteau Trophy, their first since 2009. That gives all three teams a week to get ready for the Memorial Cup in Saginaw, Mich., where the host Spirit, with their automatic entry, open the tournament May 24 against Moose Jaw, with London playing Drummondville next day. ICE CHIPS  The winner of the Frank Selke Trophy for best defensive forward will be announced Saturday. The finalists are Toronto’s Auston Matthews, Aleksander Barkov of Florida and Jordan Staal of the Hurricanes … Oilers’ Zach Hyman, nicknamed Shaq way back on the AHL Toronto Marlies by assistant coach A.J. MacLean, has traded game worn jerseys with O’Neal, the basketball superstar … This spring marks the sixth in NHL history in which all second-round series have gone at least six games, last occurring in 2017 … Avalanche blueliner Cale Makar on Wednesday became the fourth defenceman to score 20 career playoff goals before his 26th birthday, joining: Paul Coffey, Denis Potvin and Bobby Orr … While Dallas veteran Joe Pavelski now has the 13th most goals in NHL playoff history with 74 and now passed Alex Ovechkin for most by an active player, there’s lots of rooting interest in East End Toronto for 21-year-old teammate Wyatt Johnston, a youth graduate of the summer Withrow Park Ball Hockey League. Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland to Columbus? Rumours won't quiet down, says NHL insider Who will score PWHL Toronto-Minnesota series-winning goal? Here are our best bets l hornby@postmedia X: @sunhornby