One day Shanahan was fighting Berube and now he's hired him as his bench boss.
One day Shanahan was fighting Berube and now he's hired him as his bench boss.
It's not often you go into a workplace and hire someone you traded punches with. But that's the wonderful world of hockey.
The Toronto Maple Leafs hired Craig Berube to become their 32nd head coach on Friday. Shortly after the news, a video began to surface on social media that saw Leafs president Brendan Shanahan getting into a fight with Berube from their playing days.
Shanahan saw the video and recalled that moment.
"I remember that one in particular. I think I was around 19. I came in as an 18-year-old old I was playing in the bottom six and playing a lot against Craig and then about halfway through my second year, I got put on the first line and doing really well in the first line and Craig came up to me at the end of the game and said well, 'I guess you're not gonna fight us guys anymore,' and I said 'let's go'," Shanahan said.
The fight took place on Feb. 24, 1989, while Shanahan was playing for the New Jersey Devils and Berube was with the Philadelphia Flyers. Thirty-five years later Shanahan, along with Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving have chosen Berube to help lead a new voice in the team's locker room.
"You always knew when he was on the ice and he's translated that to his career coaching,' Shanahan said of Berube. "You know and going through this process and bringing it back to us searching for our next head coach, the more people you dug into and the more layers that you more information you got, the feedback was even more positive. It just felt like things that we were hoping for things that we saw were confirmed."
Shanahan had 97 fights in the NHL compared to 257 from Berube
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