Craig Berube, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach
Craig Berube, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach

After Sunday’s practice, head coach Craig Berube discussed Mitch Marner becoming a new dad, the physicality of the Panthers’ game, William Nylander’s game-breaking ability in the playoffs, and much more. 

Practice Lines – May 4

Mitch Marner was missing practice for the best reason. 

Berube: Yeah! Congrats to him and his family. It is awesome. I am happy for him. I am glad everyone is good.

Were you kind of waiting and hoping it would come at the right time in the playoffs?

Berube: Yeah, we knew. As a dad, you are always kind of on edge and thinking about things. It all worked out, which is great. We are very happy for him. We will see Mitch tomorrow.

John Tavares was saying that a baby’s arrival provides a new perspective. In your experience, what’s the impact of having a baby at the most important time of the season? 

Berube: Obviously, he is in a good mood. He is probably flying high right now. I remember when I had my first child. It is a different feeling, for sure. It is one of the best feelings you’ll ever have.

I am sure he is very excited. He’ll be excited tomorrow. He needs to get a little skate in during the morning. There will be a lot of positive things on his mind, which is good.

It will be a big test for Marner and Auston Matthews against Aleksander Barkov’s line. What do you see as the biggest challenge against that line?

Berube: They are very good 200-foot players, and they have offensive abilities, obviously. Reinhart can score. Barkov does a little bit of everything. It is always a challenge playing against great players like them. They have to do a good job of checking.

As a group and as a team, we have to do a good job of checking. You have to fight for your space out there. There is not going to be an easy ice. That goes for all of their players. That’s their team. We have to fight for ice and for space out there all the time on every shift. We know that. We have been talking about it quite a bit.

On home ice, can you get Barkov and Gustav Forsling away from the Matthews line?

Berube: There are chances, yeah, but in saying that, they have the Lundell line coming. They have a nice piece there. He is a very good checker — very good. He centers a very good line.

There are always times when you can get people away from their so-called “shutdown” people, but at the same time, they are going to have to play against them. You have to keep grinding, work your way through it, wait for your opportunities, and stay patient.

You talked about the business-like approach throughout the playoffs so far. How have you seen the team’s mental side of the game grow since you came aboard as head coach? 

Berube: When dealing with the ups and downs during a game — and when it’s not going well during a game — there is not a lot of emotion involved in it. It’s just, “Okay, we’re good. We’re going to keep working.”

Our leaders have done a great job of handling that. I hear them on the bench talking, and it is not just Matthews and Marner. It is a lot of different guys — Tanev, McCabe. They’re just sticking with it, being patient, and not letting their emotions get too involved in anything.

Yes, you need emotion to play this game, but it has to be directed in the right way.

Does a lot of that approach come from you as the coach? After the second loss in a row to Ottawa, you shrugged it off quickly, and the team did as well.

Berube: Well, we talked about composure before the series. Composure is not just the in-game composure, which is very important, but the outside composure you need when there are losses and outside noise. There is going to be. It is part of it all.

You have to let it slide off your back and get ready. Just focus on the next game and the next shift. It will be important in this series because there will not be a lot of room out there, and there will be a lot of times when there is not a lot going the way you want it to. You have to keep battling and stay patient with it.

Was the composure exemplified by the team losing all its momentum when Ottawa came back from 2-0 down in Game 6, and your team taking the lead back just over 100 seconds later?

Berube: It was really good on the bench. I could just hear the guys talk and the things they said, which was very good. I didn’t have to say anything. I thought we went right back to playing — playing our game — and we ended up scoring the goal that counted and mattered.

That big goal was scored by Max Pacioretty on a line with Max Domi. Why did you decide to go back to him with John Tavares?

Berube: In the third period, I wanted a little more speed on that line at the time. There was the Stutzle matchup, and he was moving. He was coming with a lot of speed. I wanted a little more speed on the line, so I made the switch later on in the third.

How much does composure matter when you are playing a “mean” hockey team?

Berube: Are they “mean?”

I agree they play a hard game. They forecheck hard, and they are physical. They are in your face the whole game. I don’t necessarily think it is mean. That is just their game.

We are a physical team, too. We have to go out and be physical ourselves. We have to initiate as much as possible.

Yeah, we are going to get banged around. They are going to come and hit. That is just part of it. I thought Ottawa did the same thing to us — they were physical, they were on us, and they were hitting. I thought we handled it well.

John Tavares mentioned that William Nylander is the “ultimate game breaker” in the league. What have you noticed about Nylander’s game when the postseason rolls around?

Berube: Nothing bothers him. He just goes out and plays. It may not be on that shift for him or the next shift or even the one after that, but at some point, he understands that he is going to get an opportunity, and when he does, he makes teams pay.

When you talk about composure, he is pretty composed — maybe sometimes too much, haha.

If we’re looking at the matchup of the third lines on these teams, their third line looks about as good as you can put together in the league. Yours has been a work in progress this year. How do you see it playing out?

Berube: I think the Laughton line has done a great job of jumping in that hole a lot of the time and playing in that sort of a role. I did it in the Ottawa series. I used them a lot as that type of line, whether I got them out there against Stutzle or the Cozens line. They have done a great job of it. We are going to need the line to do the same thing in this series, for sure.

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