Craig Berube is the new head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs and he has been tasked with something almost impossible, which is getting this team a Stanley Cup. Despite a solid start to the season, the Leafs have been faltering as of late. Just the other night, they lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets by a score of 6-2.
Tonight, they played against the St. Louis Blues and lost the game in a pretty pathetic fashion by a score of 5-1. It was a bad night for a lot of players, including Auston Matthews.
Overall, it was one of the worst games we have seen from Matthews since his career started. Defensively, he was awful and was responsible for the goal below, in which Matthews left his man completely open in the slot. After the play, Matthews was absolutely berated by his head coach.
Under Sheldon Keefe , these kinds of situation on the bench were a lot more rare. Having said that, this is probably very exciting for Leafs fans to see. They finally have a head coach is going off on his players when they do something wrong.
Regardless, the Leafs are still losing out here which certainly is not a good thing. One has to wonder if there is anything wrong with the team right now or if it is just early season adjustments to a new coaching style. Whatever the case may be, it is still way too early to hit any sort of panic button.
This article first appeared on Hockey Unplugged and was syndicated with permission..