Maple Leafs HC Craig Berube pinpoints Toronto’s issue in back-to-back losses that must be fixed

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube spoke about the team’s struggles after back-to-back 5-3 losses to the Boston Bruins. The Leafs also lost 5-4 to the Carolina Hurricanes between those games. The team is now on a three-game losing streak.

Speaking about the losses, Berube said the problem is about mindset and effort.

"Well, for me, it's just a mindset," Berube said, via The Hockey News. "If you want to be a good defensive team, you've got to check, you've got to have good sticks, you've got to be hard, you've got to win battles, and you've got to have good structure. "And right now, you know, there's not – it's a mindset for me. We're not – we don't have any of that right now."

The Maple Leafs have an 8-8-1 record, and their power play and penalty kill both need urgent focus in order to recover. Berube said his priority is getting the team back on track.

"Well, like I said, I just keep working at it," Berube said, about a potential solution. "My job as a coach is to get them back on track. And that's what I'm going to try to do. That's what I've done. And I'm going to keep banging away at it. It's what we can do. You look at video, you talk, we've got to have discussions with players, with the team. And, you know, get back."

The Leafs are playing their first season without forward Mitch Marner, who was traded to Vegas. That offensive void has limited their goal scoring to an average of 3.65 goals per game, but allows 3.82.

Here, the coach sees their goals allowed as the biggest problem.

"We're scoring enough goals every game to win games," Berube said. "We're letting in too many goals. So, pretty much the season is we don't value the defensive side of the puck enough. And there's a number of things that go into that, but I'm not going to get into all that. Right now, we don't value that."

William Nylander leads the Maple Leafs with 24 points, and former captain John Tavares has nine goals so far. Captain Auston Matthews has the same number of goals, but it's a down year for him in comparison to his 69-goal season in 2023-24.

Maple Leafs coach on the reason behind Boston's goals

Toronto Maple Leafs' second loss to the Boston Bruins came at home on Saturday. They had an early lead, but Boston recovered with two back-to-back goals from Morgan Geekie and Viktor Arvidsson just 20 seconds apart. The Bruins controlled much of the game, and outshot Toronto 39-33.

Berube said many of Boston’s goals came from Toronto’s own mistakes.

“I thought three of the goals we ended up bringing the puck back in our zone, we didn’t need to," Berube said. "We could have just got it out but they ended up scoring on three of them. "I thought we didn’t execute well enough with the puck early on. I think we all got to be better including the goalie… and for me, we caused all those goals ourselves.”

The Maple Leafs will look to tighten their defense and limit turnovers. Improving focus and effort will matter the most in ending their losing streak.

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Edited by Ankit Kumar