When Ken Hitchcock first met Craig Berube, the new coach of the Maple Leafs was just a teenager getting off a yellow school bus from Williams Lake, B.C. to try out for the Kamloops Blazers.
That was 1984.
What followed is 40 years of friendship as the coach/player relationship morphed into mentor/coach.
“We got to spend an awful lot of time together,” said Hitchcock, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame last year. “Craig really became a student of coaching, and he studied coaches. I gave him a lot of stuff to work on, and he was diligent as hell. And he made himself a coach, but he never lost his core values as a player, which is pretty impressive.”
A bruising winger, Berube played one junior season for Hitchcock in Kamloops (1985-86). They started their NHL careers together in Philadelphia, with Hitchcock hired as an assistant coach in 1990 and the never-drafted Berube just beginning to establish himself as an NHL regular.
They’d cross paths again when Berube started as an assistant with the AHL Philadelphia Phantoms while Hitchcock was coaching the Flyers.
“Their office was right down the hall from mine,” said Hitchcock. “I’ve always been an early-riser guy, and Craig is the same. There were a lot of days that he was in his office before I got there. And I just knew at that time that if he got the opportunity, he was going to be successful because he was absorbing information, he was seeking new information, and he started to really study what it would take to be a good coach.”
At his introductory news conference on Tuesday, Berube pointed to a few people who’d been instrumental in his coaching development, including John Stevens, Paul Holmgren and Bobby Clarke. Each brought him along in their own way.
But he was essentially out of the game in 2015-16, having parted ways with the Flyers. He did some scouting, then clawed his way back into coaching by taking a job with the AHL’s Chicago Wolves, then the St. Louis Blues’ top minor-league affiliate. He was promoted to the Blues staff in 2017.
By then, Hitchcock had become a trusted consultant to GM Doug Armstrong, whose 2018-19 Blues were underachieving. Firing head coach Mike Yeo was the easy choice; replacing him would be more difficult.
“Doug asked me about (Berube),” said Hitchcock. “I really believed in him. I thought he’d be a really good choice, and to see him get the job and have success was really impressive to me.”
His first team-bonding exercise in St. Louis was to take down the NHL standings that had been posted in the dressing room. It was too depressing for a talented team that had been left for dead. They were fragile, unable to hold leads. Berube got them to believe in each other.
“He has a strong belief system in what it takes to be a teammate and in building teams,” said Hitchcock. “He understands that if you build a team that has a real strong value system, the wins will take care of themselves.”
The Blues would go on to win the Stanley Cup that year. And that Cup ring is a big reason why the Leafs turned to Berube, believing his no-nonsense approach will help the team put its playoff disappointments behind.
“He’s the right fit for this group,” said former Leaf Jay Rosehill, now co-host of ”The Leafs Nation” podcast. “He’s got a good mixture of old school and new school. He’s not screaming and yelling and banging his fists or anything like that, but he has these expectations that go without saying.
“When you play for Chief, you want to do things the right way. You want to give him what he’s asking for. He’s just a guy that you automatically respect and want to play for, and I think other teams that he’s had have experienced that as well.”
Rosehill played for Berube in Philadelphia.
“He’s a straight-up guy,” said Rosehill. “You can talk to him. He doesn’t have a big growl on his face all the time. He’s not trying to mean-mug everybody; he’s fairly jovial. He’s got a great sense of humour. You can talk to him. He’s always laughing with the staff and stuff like that.
“But when it’s time to talk hockey, he’s all business.”
Under Sheldon Keefe, the Leafs played what they called possession hockey, often retreating into their zone to restart a play that didn’t work out. Under Berube, they are more likely to play dump-and-chase, retrieving the puck with a heavy forecheck.
“He has a philosophy about playing heavy, moving north,” said Rosehill. “It’s almost a simpler philosophy. He certainly has his structure.
“But the overall ethos is: play heavy and go north. It’s less of the dipsy-do, more of just attacking, moving your feet, playing with speed. With that comes a lot of puck possession, comes a lot of turnovers. And when you get that puck in the right spots, the skill on the Toronto Maple Leafs can take over.”
While Keefe might have been guilty of over-relying on the team’s highest-paid stars, Berube will make a point of finding a way to include everybody.
“The Maple Leafs have a lot of really good players who play awful well,” said Hitchcock. “But in winning at the end of the year, it’s your depth players that have to be productive. And Craig has a really strong way of getting players to embrace their roles, embrace improvement, and he gets a lot out of the whole group. That’s his strength.”
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