As the Maple Leafs' power play craters and the team slides down the standings, head coach Craig Berube is running out of answers—and patience—for a roster that seems to have lost its way.
WASHINGTON — For the first time this season, Toronto’s struggling power play went 0-for-5 in a 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena on Thursday. For a club that boasts weapons like Auston Matthews, John Tavares, and William Nylander, a power play that has dropped to 14.1 percent through 33 games would normally be the top takeaway in a loss.
But the Leafs found a way to play one of their worst games of the season, reaching a point where head coach Craig Berube appears to be out of answers. After citing Washington’s desperation and urgency over his own club, Berube was asked point-blank why that was the case. Given the Leafs fell to 15-13-5—sitting third-worst in the Eastern Conference—while the Capitals sit in second place in the Metropolitan Division, the head coach passed the buck:
“Ask those guys, not me”.
Berube has tried to get his players to stick to a defensive structure while pushing play forward when the opportunity strikes. The message seemed to work last season when the club finished first in the Atlantic Division. Now, however, his players are tremendously underperforming and the situation shows no signs of improving.
“I thought we just made it really easy for them,” Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews said. “The neutral zone was a highway for them to get through. I don’t know, we just made it so easy for them”.
The statistics backed up the captain's frustration; the line consisting of Matthews, William Nylander, and Matthew Knies was outshot 7-0 at 5-on-5. While a decent power play could have saved the Leafs from the game ending the way it did, nobody had answers on how to fix it other than repeating the season-long mantra: execution.
Berube appeared open to shuffling things further after this performance. But Nylander, who like Matthews has also gone cold in recent days, couldn’t put his finger on why his team’s compete level has vanished.
“I don’t know, it’s a tough question,” he said.
John Tavares, as he has done throughout his tenure with the Leafs, elected to focus on the idea that the team is not far from where they want to be. It is evident, however, that this is not what fans want to hear right now.
"Well, clearly we're not in the spot we want to be in. But we're not far off from being in a really good spot,” Tavares said. “We have to realize night in and night out just how much more consistent we have to be with our game.
You don’t need to look at the underlying analytics to see the Leafs are struggling; this was the type of contest that likely gets a team booed off the ice had they played at home. With the holidays nearing, pressure is mounting on Berube to fix the club. Is his message getting lost?
"I don't think I'm concerned about that. I mean, the message is the message," Berube said. "They need to take it and go with it, but I'm not concerned with it, no".