Craig Berube on the maintenance day for Joseph Woll: “He works extremely hard in practice and tries on every play… We have to pull back a little bit at times”

After Tuesday’s practice, head coach Craig Berube discussed the latest updates on Connor Dewar, John Tavares, Max Pacioretty, Jani Hakanpaa, and Anthony Stolarz, the Morgan Rielly-Jake McCabe pairing, the team’s offensive uptick recently, and managing Joseph Woll’s workload.

Practice Lines – Jan. 21

Leafs practice lines

Knies – Matthews – Marner
McMann – Holmberg – Nylander
Domi – Minten – Robertson
Lorentz – Kampf – Reaves

Rielly – McCabe
Ekman-Larsson – Tanev
Benoit – Timmins
Hakanpää, Myers

Hildeby

Woll appears to be getting day off

Dewar, Pacioretty absent

— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) January 21, 2025

What is Connor Dewar’s status?

Berube: He is day-to-day right now with an upper-body (injury). He won’t be in the game tomorrow.

Is there a timeline for John Tavares?

Berube: No. He hasn’t been on the ice yet, so hopefully, it will happen soon. We’ll get him on the ice, get him going, and see how he feels. I really don’t have a timeline on that one right now.

How about Max Pacioretty?

Berube: He won’t play tomorrow. It is a day-to-day situation for him, too.

Is there any sense of Anthony Stolarz’s proximity to a return?

Berube: He is on the ice moving around. Next week, he might get more active in the net and start moving and going up and down. We have to take it day-to-day. It is all about how he feels and where he is at with his movement.

He is on track, so he is doing well.

And Jani Hakanpaa’s status?

Berube: He had a good practice today, I thought. He looked like he was moving well. Again, it is a feel thing with where he is at.

I am hoping he can keep practicing with us without having to take two days off, but again, it is about how he feels. We need to get some consistency there in practice to get him going.

What have you liked about Matthew Knies’ penalty-killing ability?

Berube: Well, he reads it really well. He does a great job with his reads and the structure of the penalty kill. He has speed — he is quick, and he is on top of things. He has a good stick and is very strong. When there are battles, he wins them. He has done a really good job penalty killing for us this year.

Did you identify Knies early on as a potential penalty-killer?

Berube: Not right away. You are kind of looking at everybody in camp and going through it. Everybody was getting their opportunities in camp, and he definitely was one of the better ones.

You mentioned that the forwards are finding different ways to score under the new systems. Did you think the win over Tampa Bay was another example?

Berube: I think we are doing a good job of slashing and pushing out on things through the neutral zone to create some offense that way. Willy has had the breakaways and opportunities.

Everybody plays so tight on you now that you have to push out on people and be strong with your battles in the neutral zone. You have to be underneath people who are coming. We are starting to do a better job in that department and getting pucks out of the zone. It doesn’t always have to be on the tape, but we are hitting the “slash” guy a lot, and it creates a lot of opportunities with people coming underneath.

Offensively, in the offensive zone, there is a lot more movement. Our D are more active. Morgan Rielly was up in the play quite a bit last night and had some opportunities. We have to keep stressing that.

In the offensive zone, it is all about work and compete — you have to be heavy and win your battles — but we are shooting a lot more pucks from the top with traffic at the net and creating things that way.

Our 1-3-1 setups and our cycles look like they are coming around. We are working on them more, too, which helps.

Auston Matthews was saying that William Nylander cheats for offense in a good way. Do you give Nylander the green light to lean toward offense when he is out there, knowing he can generate those breakaways?

Berube: I think it goes for anybody. Again, we will talk about the slashing part of it coming out of our zone, reading it, and pushing the D out.

[Nylander] is so good with his feet and his stick that these pucks that come up there, he will get his feet or his stick on them and can make a play off of them. He beats the D, or he is such a strong person and skater that he cuts in and gets behind them for opportunities.

What did you see from the Morgan Rielly and Jake McCabe pairing?

Berube: I thought they were solid. They had a good game. It allowed Morgan to do his thing a little bit more, jumping up into the play. Caber will sit back and let him do his thing. He was up in the rush on a few plays and had some opportunities.

They just have to keep building their relationship as a pairing.

What have you learned about Joseph Woll this season that you didn’t know previously?

Berube: He is very talented. That is definitely one thing, and he is a very hard worker. He works extremely hard in practice and tries on every play in practice. That is where we have to pull back a little bit at times.

He had a maintenance day today. If he is out there, he is going to compete on every puck. He is at the level now where he has played a lot for us. He needed a day.

Extremely talented goalie, and he’s competitive.

How differently are goalies handled nowadays compared to years ago? 

Berube: It is different for everybody, I think. Back in the day, we practiced all the time, and they were about an hour and a half long. There was a lot of standing around and chalkboard talks.

In the way the game is played, the speed it is played at, and the schedule being condensed, you have to have rest. Goalies are a big part of it. They are in a competitive environment for 60 minutes.

[Woll] has had some work, and he has done a good job for us.

Goalies playing 70 games like back in the day — you don’t see that a whole lot anymore. There are a couple of guys who play a lot of games, but a lot of the time, it is a tandem in the league.

Were you ever part of the two-a-day practices back in the day?

Berube: Oh yeah. Mike Keenan liked two-a-days (laughs).

Back then, you either had a scrimmage right away, so you’d have four teams. Other teams maybe practiced, and then they scrimmaged. That is how it worked back in the day.

If you were on a team, you’d have four teams, and you’d practice and scrimmage that day. The scrimmages weren’t much fun, to be honest with you, because there was a lot of action. A lot of fights.

Ryan Reaves mentioned that he didn’t like how Arber Xhekaj handled their interaction on Saturday. What did you think about the way Ryan handled it? It couldn’t have been easy.

Berube: It is not easy. I have been in that situation myself both ways. It is just part of the game. Reavo has been around the game for a long time. He understands. He handled it very well.

It was a good time for [Reaves] to go and challenge him. We were down in the game. He wanted to get something going. I can see the other side of it with Xhekaj. They were up 3-0.

It is a little bit of gamesmanship that goes on with that.