Camera Catches Craig Berube Tearing a Strip Off of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies
Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube was less than impressed with the defensive play of his top line on Thursday and gave an earful to Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies.
The Leafs welcomed the St. Louis Blues to Scotiabank Arena on Thursday after returning home from Columbus following a stinker of an effort on Tuesday on the second half of a back-to-back. The hope was that the Leafs would bring a much better effort to the table on Thursday. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
The Blues got off to a quick 2-0 start in this one before Oliver Ekman-Larsson cut the lead to 1. Unfortunately, within the next 2 minutes, the Blues re-gained their 2-goal lead with an Alexandre Texier goal against the Leafs' top line of Knies, Matthews and Marner. Berube was irate, and let the Leafs' top line hear all about it. In the clip below, you can clearly see Berube shouting at Auston Matthews on the bench. You don't have to he a lip-reader to understand the tone of the conversation.
Berube used that opportunity to send the Leafs a message, sending out his 4th line for an offensive zone draw coming out of the TV timeout -- a situation typically reserved for a team's top players.
At that point in the game, the Leafs' top line were each a -5 in the previous 5 periods of play, going back to the loss in Columbus. Not exactly much to feel good about there.
It would not be shocking to see the Leafs begin to tinker with some new lineup combinations as early as Friday's practice ahead of Saturday's game against the Leafs' archrivals, the Boston Bruins.
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2 HOURS AGO | 108 ANSWERS Camera Catches Craig Berube Tearing a Strip Off of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies Should Craig Berube break up the Knies, Matthews, Marner line? | ||
