'He gets results': What Maple Leafs players can expect playing for Craig Berube (2024)

Robert Bortuzzo’s eyes widened as he shifted in his seat to deal with new – and at first uncomfortable – information.

Standing a few rows ahead of the then-St. Louis Blues defenceman in their practice facility video room was Bortuzzo’s new interim head coach, Craig Berube. But Berube certainly felt a lot closer.

With the Blues sitting dead last in the Central Division and second-last in the NHL in November 2018, Berube didn’t waste any time letting his players know in their first meeting together that he expected things to change, pronto. Berube delivered the news with his typically short sentences in an emphatic tone.

“You could feel his passion,” Bortuzzo said of the first time Berube addressed the team as coach. “There was an intensity to it.”

One message resonated above all: With the Blues’ season on the line, the onus was now shifting toward the players to change their ways.

“There were some words that were said that I can’t repeat,” then-Blues goalie Jake Allen, seated a few rows away from Bortuzzo, remembers. “(Berube) made his presence felt immediately. We understood from that moment on that every single person in that locker room was accountable for their own actions and he was going to hold you to that standard.”

If a player missed his assignment on the ice in a way he might have earlier in the season, he was going to hear about it. If a player didn’t compete in a battle to the standard Berube was now setting, his ice time might suffer, regardless of the name on the back of his jersey and how many numbers were printed on his pay stub.

“Right away, we realized the accountability level was going up,” Bortuzzo said.

And it did.

Though it took time for players to catch up to Berube’s heightened demands – they sat tied for dead last in the NHL at the end of the 2018 calendar year – they then produced one of the great turnarounds in modern NHL history, going 30-10-5 from Jan. 1 2019 on en route to winning the franchise’s only Stanley Cup.

Yes, Jordan Binnington put up the most sterling numbers of his career as a rookie Blues goalie that season and yes, Ryan O’Reilly played the best hockey of his life en route to winning the Conn Smythe Trophy. But players agree: The winds of change in the Midwest truly started blowing during that meeting.

“(Berube) was one of the big pieces that turned the ship,” Allen said. “Ultimately it comes down to the players but you need someone to look up to, believe in and set a tone and an attitude.”

And now Berube will have an even larger but still flailing ship to steer back on course. On Friday, Berube was named the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Berube takes over a team that has not gotten past the first round in seven of their last eight playoff appearances.

“We have to find a way to do the hard, unsexy things longer,” Leafs general manager Brad Treliving said when Sheldon Keefe was fired. “Those things don’t require skill. There are some things in our sport, especially at this time of the year, that are not related to skill but help you win. That is not to say you have to get rid of skill. You need skill and talent to win. But to me, we need a voice that can bring that out.”

Those who have played under Berube saw first-hand what he’s capable of and believe he can be the necessary new voice in Toronto.

“It’s all team-first with Craig Berube. That’s all he cares about. He does not care about individuals, points… it’s team-first all the way. If that hurts some people’s feelings along the way, so be it,” Bortuzzo said.

“But he gets results, and results matter.”

The focus of the 2018-19 Blues under Berube was simple: Generic as it might sound, his players were pushed to compete to their highest potential.

“The game comes down to hundreds of little 50-50 battles. And (Berube) expects you to win more than you lost,” Bortuzzo said.

This was in line with the kind of player Berube was during his 17-season NHL career. No hit was not worth throwing and no opposition player was off-limits to engage physically. Berube ended up logging 1,054 NHL games and his 3,149 career penalty minutes are seventh all-time in NHL history.

And so that first video session and the video sessions that followed weren’t heavy on a new tactical direction. Instead, Berube was relentless with the amount of clips he showed breaking down how the Blues weren’t winning battles and the results weren’t going their way because of it.

“Turnovers, poor puck management, that did not fly,” Bortuzzo said.

Losing the puck was one thing but Berube expected increased effort when trying to win it back.

Players quickly realized why Berube was demanding increased intensity midway through the season. He didn’t believe in flipping the switch, as it were, and asking his team to start playing playoff-style hockey after the regular season.

“There aren’t two styles of hockey. You are who you are,” Bortuzzo said. “He didn’t want us playing two types of hockey. All year, you’re trying to become a better team.”

Video sessions focused on explaining and examples of how in the postseason, power plays shrink and scoring off the rush becomes more difficult. Puck management, therefore, was at a premium in the regular season. Players were shown examples of how to protect and then distribute the puck more effectively.

Practices became heavy on battle drills as Berube expected a level of engagement physically. And if players weren’t doing their part, again, they’d receive a dressing down from Berube in a way they might not have been accustomed to.

Now, Bortuzzo wants to note, he remembers Berube understanding that not every player was going to throw a hit in the vein of say, Ryan Reaves or Simon Benoit. And that was fine.

But what didn’t fly was not engaging physically in some manner. Berube stressed how that physical engagement could continually influence the game.

“You can’t play your game without getting your jersey dirty. That was something he believed,” Bortuzzo said.

Was it strange, perhaps difficult to accept at first for some? Sure.

But at the very least, Berube’s message was easy to understand.

Berube’s direct – and effective – communication style not only meant players always knew where they stood with their head coach, it meant they generally enjoyed punching in for work every morning under Berube.

“(Berube) is not going to play games with you. He’s going to tell you what you need and whether it’s good enough or not good enough,” Allen said. “The guys really appreciated what he did. They enjoyed playing for him and going to the rink because they knew he was there to win, and so were we.”

And that’s because one of Berube’s defining traits, according to both Bortuzzo and Allen, was how he valued players up and down the lineup equally.

“(Berube) knows every piece of the puzzle is important,” Allen said. “He expects everyone to do their job the same way.”

That meant recognizing the bottom-pair defender publicly when he neutralized the opponent’s best line or bottom six forwards when they won the necessary battles to put top-line forwards in good spots on the ensuing shift. That even meant ensuring offensively-inclined high-end players (though that Blues team was lacking in pure star power) didn’t have a longer leash than others lower down the lineup.

“I never really felt that through my tenure,” Allen said of that aforementioned long leash. “I felt he demanded the same out of every single player.”

Allen is 33 and can easily call himself a veteran in the NHL. He’s logged time under eight different head coaches. His assessment of Berube’s ability to treat every person equally is rooted in experience.

“Sometimes, in this day and age, (treating players equally) goes to the wayside. It’s not for everyone. But if you can buy in, accept that what he’s preaching is going to produce results, it generates success. It doesn’t matter what your roster is cultivated of,” Allen said.

So maybe that meant players not just higher up the lineup, but throughout the lineup, would get an earful at times. But even that, Bortuzzo insists, was easy to take “because you knew it was for the betterment of the team.”

“It all came from a place of being a competitive guy who wanted to win,” Bortuzzo said. “The more time you spent around him, you knew he wanted the best for the guys.”

As the months wore on and the wins kept piling up, Blues players began to understand that Berube’s intensity and approach was paying off. Players had largely bought into his responsible way of playing the game.

“It snowballs,” Allen said of the impact of Berube’s approach.

The Craig Berube Effect kept snowballing far past the point when snow was on the ground in St. Louis.

The Blues toppled two teams who finished above them in the standings in the Winnipeg Jets and the San Jose Sharks en route to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Nothing deviated from the Blues’ approach against a hardened Boston Bruins team. They knew Berube had prepared them.

Berube and the Blues won Game 7 in Boston for the organization’s first Stanley Cup. Berube became just the second interim coach in NHL history to win a Stanley Cup.

The Blues were then the second-best team in the NHL the next year when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the season after 71 games.

Though both Bortuzzo and Allen still wonder what could have been had they played a full 2019-20 season, they both look back at the need for a spark in their dressing room earlier in 2018 as an evident turning point in their careers. That spark eventually caught fire, and many of the Blues who peer down on the Stanley Cup rings on their fingers will think of Berube when doing so.

“I wish I had a couple more years to play for (Berube),” Allen said. “That presence that he has, it’s irreplaceable to me.”

(Photo of Blues head coach Craig Berube: Scott Rovak / NHLI via Getty Images)