Pete DeBoer reached out to Craig Berube over Maple Leafs' coaching rumors
Pete DeBoer was hearing his name all over the Toronto media landscape and wanted to get out ahead of it. With the struggles ongoing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and one assistant coach fired in Marc Savard, DeBoer was hearing his name as a replacement for head coach Craig Berube.
DeBoer had been on the other side of this throughout his career, so he felt it was important to reach out to Berube and still the waters. Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported on Saturday.
One other thing that happened this week that I thought was pretty interesting was that Peter DeBoer, who was the subject of much speculation to potentially replace Craig Berube as the Maple Leafs’ coach, sent a note through a friend to Berube saying, ‘Forget all this noise. I’m not involved here, and it’s not happening.’ Found out about it today, sent a note to DeBoer about it and all he said was ‘I’ve been on the other side of that. I didn’t like the fact that I was on this side of it this time.
DeBoer certainly wants to return to the NHL at some point, but he hadn't been in discussions with Leafs' general manager Brad Treliving about a return behind the bench. DeBoer couldn't figure out why all the noise when Treliving just gave Berube a vote of confidence a few short days ago.
“Well, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals of what happens with this,” Treliving said when asked about his vote of confidence extending to losses continue. “We’ve got a good coach. We’ve got to continue to make our team better. We’ve got areas that we’ve got to get better in. It’s not lost on us where the team’s at. We live it every day. But I think we’ve got a real good coach.”
