Craig Berube didn’t hold back when talking about what happened to the Toronto Maple Leafs last season. The answer, at least from his perspective, is simple: losing Mitch Marner wrecked everything.
Berube, who got fired after Toronto’s disastrous 2025-26 campaign, said on the Simmer’s Morning Skate podcast that Marner was way more than just a point producer. He was the guy keeping the room alive.
“We lost our emotional leader, for sure,” Berube said. “I thought Mitch was the energy. He brought the energy and the emotion to the game, I thought, on a nightly basis. And in practice. Vocal guy, chatted a lot on the bench, chatted a lot in practice, brought the energy. If he came back to the bench, he let guys know, ‘Pick it up, let’s go.’ He was great. I really enjoyed coaching him.”
That’s a pretty raw admission from a guy who’s usually pretty measured. Berube essentially said his team didn’t just lose a star winger. They lost the guy who made everyone else play harder.
The numbers tell a brutal story
Toronto finished with 78 points in 2025-26. That’s not just missing the playoffs. That’s ugly. The kind of season that gets a coach fired and makes the front office rethink everything.
Meanwhile, Marner signed with the Vegas Golden Knights after the 2024-25 season and helped take them all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. They lost to the Carolina Hurricanes, but Marner put up 29 points in the playoffs. That’s top-tier production when it matters most.
So you have one side falling apart and the other side thriving. And the guy who left is the one Berube calls the emotional engine of the team. It’s not hard to connect those dots.
Toronto turns to a familiar face
The Maple Leafs didn’t wait long to find Berube’s replacement. They brought back Jim Hiller, the former Toronto assistant who also coached the Los Angeles Kings. Hiller sounded excited but realistic about the job in front of him.
“I’m incredibly excited for the opportunity to return to Toronto and lead the Maple Leafs,” Hiller said. “This is a special organization with great players, passionate fans and high expectations. I’m looking forward to getting to work with our players and staff and doing everything we can to help this team reach its full potential.”
The Leafs have 13 Stanley Cup banners hanging in the rafters. None of them have been added since 1967. That drought is the elephant in every room, every press conference, every season preview. Hiller’s job is to drag the team back to relevance after a year that felt like a step backward for the whole organization.
And somewhere in Las Vegas, Mitch Marner is probably thinking about how the team he left can’t even sniff the playoffs without him.
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