Craig Berube says Maple Leafs don’t value defensive side of the puck enough

Head coach Craig Berube says that the team’s struggles are a mentality issue.

“For me, it’s just a mindset. If you want to be a good defensive team, you’ve got to check, you’ve got to have good sticks, you’ve got to win battles, and you’ve got to have good structure. And right now, it’s a mindset for me. We don’t have any of that right now.”

One of the most pleasant surprises from last season was that the Leafs were both getting good goaltending and putting extra emphasis on the defensive side of the game. This season, they have not, and Berube kept things blunt when he asked how the team can get out of this rut.

“We’re scoring enough goals to win games, we’re letting in too many goals,” Berube told reporters. “We don’t value the defensive side of the puck enough. There’s a number of things that go into that, but I’m not going to get into all that right now. We just don’t right now, we don’t value that.”

Hildeby may have allowed five goals, but it’s hard to act like he was one of the reasons to blame for the loss considering the team surrendered a whopping 47 shots. Berube refused to condemn anything about Hildeby’s performance, citing the fact that the Leafs allowed multiple breakaways in the second period, on which he made the crucial saves and kept the team in the game when they probably didn’t deserve to be. You could hear the frustration in his voice when he talked about Hildeby’s performance compared to the rest of the team.

“He made a lot of saves,” Berube said. “I mean, we gave him what, three breakaways in the second period, maybe four? I don’t know, I lost count. It has nothing to do with the goalie.”

The Maple Leafs will look to get back into the win column on Tuesday when they face the Bruins again, and Berube stressed a need to get back to the way things were trending when they won three games in a row, even if not every effort was perfect.

“It’s disappointing. I’d say, the last five games going into Saturday, we were really trending in the right direction without the puck, doing a good job. Now our power play starts to click, we are scoring goals, but we just went off the rails the last two games, defensively. It’s caused by puck play, for sure. Costly turnovers, and just, you know, the urgency that’s needed to defend.”

The Leafs will look to get revenge on Boston when they visit them on Tuesday before they host the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday and visit the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday.

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