When the Toronto Maple Leafs hired Craig Berube as their new head coach, it was made known that he would likely instill a different style of play with his new team.
It’s no secret that Berube had a reputation as a tough guy when he was a player in the NHL and no one can attest to that more than his new boss, Brendan Shanahan.
Not long after Berube was announced as Toronto’s new head coach, a video emerged of a fight between Shanahan and Berube from their playing days.
“I was playing in the bottom-six and playing a lot against Craig and then halfway through my second year I got put on the first line and was doing really well and at the end of the game he said, ‘Well, I guess you’re not going to fight us guys anymore,’ I said ‘Let’s go’ and he might have had it right, I should stop doing that,” Shanahan explained. “But (Berube) was a competitor. He was a guy that you always knew when he was on the ice and he’s translated that to his career in coaching.”
Berube played 1,054 career NHL games spanning 17 years with the Leafs, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals, Calgary Flames and New York Islanders. In that time he had 3,149 penalty minutes including over 200 fights, according to hockeyfights.com.
While known for his goal-scoring ability, Shanahan had 656 career goals and 1,354 points in 1,524 career games, the Leafs president got his nose dirty with over 90 career fights and 2,489 penalty minutes.
Shanahan notes that part of the attraction for Berube as a head coach candidate was hearing what players who played for him liked about him.
“We reached out to players that played for him, first-liners, fourth-liners, Canadian guys, European guys, players that played different styles and had different backgrounds,” Shanahan said, “They all came back to us with the same message that he’s a great coach, a great person. (They’d) go through a wall for the guy.”
