Kloke: Leafs assistant coach Marc Savard paid the price. Players need to step up

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There’s been plenty missing from the Maple Leafs this season.

Production from the power play? Check. Consistency from top stars? That’s been largely absent, too.

Earlier in the season, it was a solid defensive structure that was missing, though that element of their game has since improved. There have been nights when sheer effort has been lacking, but that’s come and gone.

Perhaps the most striking thing that hasn’t been seen or heard from the Leafs during their most recent skid is a sense of accountability from players over how badly things have turned.

Of course, blame for the Leafs sitting in last place in the Atlantic Division is shared: Coach Craig Berube has not always put together a structure best suited to his players; General manager Brad Treliving did not build a perfect roster; Marc Savard oversaw a power play that is last place in the league; many of the Leafs stars have greatly struggled this season.

Savard has been fired. And the Leafs’ stars are running out of places to lay the blame.

Accountability, you’ll remember, was supposed to be a hallmark of this Berube team.

Why has it been so rare this season for members of the Leafs — their leadership in particular — to admit they’re not playing as well as they hope to, and that they believe they can be better?

“Ask those guys, not me.”

Looking back now to Berube’s pointed comment after last week’s ugly loss to the Washington Capitals, the coach was seemingly imploring reporters to get the kind of admissions that he is forced to offer loss after loss.

Taking a quick temperature check on social media at least, fans have become increasingly desperate for accountability. Accountability from players isn’t going to magically turn losses into wins. But it might ensure the gulf that exists between players and fans doesn’t widen any further.

This is not to suggest the Leafs aren’t trying, or that they don’t care about the long-term success of this team. Not even close.

But Savard, an assistant coach, just paid the price for the players’ lack of production.

Auston Matthews is suffering through a statistically poor season. He’s scoring at a 38-goal pace over 82 games, the lowest pace of his career.

William Nylander’s 45 goals in 2024-25 were second in the NHL. He now has not scored in his last 11 games and has points in just three of those contests.

John Tavares has gone cold with two goals and one assist in his last 12 games.

Matthew Knies — in the first year of a six-year contract with a $7.75-million AAV — is failing to implement his heavy game of late and his production has also dropped: one goal and three points in his last 10 games.

Off the ice, there have been few admissions of error or real explanations of the team’s faults. There have been few passionate calls for action.

Why has no Leaf taken the ball from Anthony Stolarz, who after just the sixth game of the season, torched his team following a 4-3 loss to the Seattle Kraken?

“We kind of let them walk all over us,” Stolarz said at the time. “And we just didn’t play our game. They outworked us in front of the net. They blocked shots. They beat us up and down the ice. And the score is indicative of that. They just outworked us, plain and simple.”

To date, as the Leafs season has gotten worse, there hasn’t been enough of the fire that Stolarz threw back in October.

Matthews addressed the media after all three Leafs losses through the road trip. Good on him for stepping up as Leafs captain and answering questions as he did. He never sounded defeated. He projected confidence about what’s to come. He spoke of the need to lift up teammates through the losing streak, sounding more like the kind of all-encompassing and team-first captain Joe Thornton advised him to be. But he was asked after the loss to the Predators about how this stretch has felt for him personally.

“It’s never easy, it’s never fun,” he said. “You’ve just got to mentally grind through it. It’s one of those things that I’ve been through before. You learn to deal with it. You learn to just work harder to get yourself out of it.”

Then there’s Nylander. He’s as well liked a Leaf as there is because he has shown personality often. But when given a prime opportunity to admit he’s fallen short as of late — asked after the loss in Dallas if he’s suffering from bad luck or if there’s something he could be doing differently — Nylander said: “Bad luck, I don’t know, it’s just not going in. That’s the way it is.”

But the way it is looks different now in the wake of Savard’s firing. Matthews and Nylander are two of the three most senior Leafs. Their words carry weight. They might understand better than most how well some personal accountability would play in this market, and how their attitude might filter down through the entire Leafs dressing room.

You have to believe that’s what happened in some part back in 2021 when Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon said bluntly, “I’m going into my ninth year and I haven’t won s—” after the Avalanche’s second round loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. It was a stunning admission because it provided a window into MacKinnon’s demons: to him, words didn’t matter the way winning does. And without meaningful playoff wins, he was admitting he had failed to that as a player.

That statement resonated because it showcased how driven and vulnerable MacKinnon was all the same. The next year, the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup.

Then there’s the kind of anger-driven statements after losses that the Leafs have yet to make. In a sea of generic statements, some anger from the Leafs right now would stand out. Want to let fans know you’re as angry as they are as the season slips away? Just say so.

Take the Leon Draisaitl approach.

“We battled but we’re not leaving here as winners,” the Oilers star said after a second consecutive loss in the Stanley Cup Finals, before adding, “the takeaway is that we didn’t win. Nobody cares. Like, nobody cares, we didn’t win.”

We haven’t heard much of that kind of passion from these Leafs.

Practices have become quieter, with less audible enthusiasm from players. Berube yells and shows frustration. The players rarely do.

Sure, the Leafs might show more emotion behind closed doors. But with the eyes of the hockey world now on them, accountability in the eyes of fans means making these kinds of statements and showing this kind of emotion in front of the cameras. It’s the only window fans have into the team. It’s a window many fans are still staring at, hoping to see the signs of life that will keep them invested in a season spiralling out of control.

The first domino of the season has fallen with Savard’s firing. It’s as loud a warning shot Leafs management could fire without moving on from Berube.

Will it change the players’ approach?

This news was originally published on this post .

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