Craig Berube Cooks the Maple Leafs After Blowing a Lead, Losing to Avalanche
Photo credit: Dan Hamilton - USA Today Sports
Head coach Craig Berube isn't pushing the panic button quite yet but have his Maple Leafs an earful after choking away a late lead and losing in Colorado.
Qualifying for the post-season is nearly a foregone conclusion at this stage of the season, barring an epic collapse. However, as has been the case for nearly a decade, making the playoffs is not the ultimate goal for the Maple Leafs.
This year, the Leafs have played a very different brand of hockey than we've become accustomed to and a lot of that is attributed to Craig Berube and his new system.
Unfortunately the Leafs have recently hit a snag and with how important post-season placing has become in recent years, the last thing the Maple Leafs need is to lose their hold of the top spot in the division, which would inevitably allow them to avoid Florida or Tampa Bay in the first round.
They dropped their 3rd straight contest last night in Colorado after an ugly third period saw them blow a late lead before eventually dropping the game by a score of 7-4.
Berube was extremely dissatisfied with his team's performance and chalks it up to their mistakes in the defensive zone:
"It's just mistakes for me," said Berube. "It's a tough place to come in and play, and when you can hold a lead going into the third, we're right there to shut it down. Just gotta clean up the mistakes."
He later simplified the matter by saying that any mistakes against top tier teams like Colorado or Vegas - whom they lost to on Wednesday night - will always come back to haunt them:
"We gotta stop making mistakes because they capitalize on them," Berube added. "They're good teams, they're good players. We did a good job against MacKinnon tonight. I know he got the power play goal, but we need more guys to step up and do a job. The mistakes gotta go; they have to get cleaned up because that's what's costing us right now, these last two games. It's just mistakes."
The Maple Leafs finish off their 4-game road trip with a visit to Utah on Monday night before returning home for a 4-game set that starts with a matchup against the Florida Panthers on Thursday.
Berube's message had better get through to his players by then because their grasp of the divisional lead has dwindled as they are 4 points back despite holding a game in hand, making Thursday's matchup all that much more important.
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