Browsing: Commitment

TORONTO — Craig Berube has a front-row seat to what is quickly becoming a horror show.

The Maple Leafs head coach thought his team was coming out of a defensive fog that plagued the group in the early part of the NHL schedule as it pivoted to the weekend.

After consecutive home losses accentuated by more breakdowns and egregious turnovers, Berube and his staff are going back to the drawing board — again.

Toronto blew a 4-2 lead in Sunday’s second period as part of a 5-4 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, some 24 hours after a 5-3 defeat to the Boston Bruins.

“It’s just a mindset,” Berube said after his team surrendered 46 shots and fell to 8-7-1. “If you want to be a good defensive team, you gotta check, you gotta have good sticks, you gotta be hard, you gotta win battles, and you’ve gotta have good structure.

“We don’t have any of that right now.”

The veteran bench boss saw encouraging signs in the Leafs’ approach without the puck ahead of the Boston contest thanks to three straight wins, but there remain clear deficiencies that must be rectified.

Toronto has allowed an average of 3.75 goals against per game — good for an ugly 31st in the 32-team league — after giving up a solid 2.79 per outing in 2024-25.

“I just keep working at it,” said Berube, who hoisted the Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019. “You look at video, we gotta have discussions with players, with the team … we’re scoring enough goals every game to win games, but we’re letting in too many goals.

“Pretty much the season is, we don’t value the defensive side of the puck enough.”

Depth defenceman Philippe Myers, who’s in the lineup with shutdown option Chris Tanev out with an upper-body injury, had a second straight rough night, with his worst moment coming on a giveaway that paved the way for Carolina’s fourth goal. The usually steady Jake McCabe then made a similar blue-line gaffe in the lead-up to Sunday’s winner.

That came after the Leafs hung third-string goaltender Dennis Hildeby out to dry in the second with chance after chance, including a string of breakaways.

“Stuff that we just can’t seem to get right or we can’t seem to have a consistency over a full 60 minutes,” said Toronto captain Auston Matthews, who finished with a goal and an assist. “There’s gonna be times where there’s momentum shifts and stuff like that, but to break that momentum as quickly as possible and get back on the right side of things, we’re not doing that quick enough.”

Leafs centre John Tavares said the club is making errors that simply can’t happen in the NHL.

“At times we did some really good things, earned opportunities and were able to give ourselves the lead,” said Tavares, who had a goal and an assist. “And then our game, just for whatever reason, becomes really immature and we don’t manage the game very well.”

“We have a lot of very good hockey players,” he added. “We have a very veteran team, so it’s just the decision to do it shift after shift.”

Toronto winger William Nylander had two goals to round out the offence, but was guilty of giving the puck away for one of the second-period breakaways.

“We’ve just got to focus on that aspect and really bear down,” he said of finding consistency. “Just comes down to simplifying and not trying to make another play.”

Tavares said the Leafs aren’t panicking, but after their league-high 12th home game, the road is only going to get more difficult if the standard of work, commitment and attention to detail isn’t met.

“We gain some traction and then we shoot ourselves in the foot again and just put ourselves in a tough spot,” he said. “There’s a ton of hockey left to be played. We’ve just gotta pick ourselves back up and get ready for the next opportunity, and build from there.”

A disappointed Berube said Toronto, which is finally getting production from its power play, has to show a lot more when the opposition is on the attack.

“We were really trending in the right direction without the puck,” he said. “We’re scoring goals, but now we just went right off the rails the last two games defensively … it’s caused by puck play, costly turnovers.

“And the urgency that’s needed to defend.”Â

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As AJ Dybantsa enters his freshman season at BYU with high expectations, he revealed that Kevin Durant is one of the NBA stars that he looks to emulate on the floor.

“I be spamming hesi pull, I ain’t gonna lie,” Dybantsa told Boardroom’s Rich Kleiman (15:50 mark). “I watch too much Kevin Durant not to do it.”

“KD was my favorite player since I started watching him play,” he said (6:14 mark).

The 18-year-old also recounted his experience watching the Dallas Mavericks select Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft after playing against him prior to their respective college careers.

“You know what’s crazy? I’m a month younger than Coop, he was in our class,” Dybantsa said (13:58 mark). “I’ve been playing against Coop since eighth grade. So watching him just go number one, it was like, ‘We were just playing with/against each other.’ It was crazy. Crazy.”

He committed to the Cougars in Dec. 2024, explaining that their coaching staff filled with NBA experience aligned with his long-term goal of making it to the association.

“I mean obviously my ultimate goal is the NBA and after they hired Kevin Young, he hired a strength coach from the Milwaukee Bucks,” Dybantsa said (8:38 mark). “A dietician from the Suns, analytics from the Suns. He just started stacking NBA prototypes around us. And it was just a family atmosphere on my visit. They were changing my name at the football game…There was less distraction there.”

It isn’t difficult to imagine him playing in the NBA in the near future, as he was listed as the No. 1 overall prospect in the country as part of the 2025 recruiting class (via 247Sports’ composite rankings).

He averaged 21.5 points and 12.7 rebounds to go along with 3.2 assists per game during his 2024-25 high school season, according to MaxPreps.

Dybantsa also stood out during the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup, recording 14.3 points and 4.1 rebounds in 20.1 minutes per game while shooting 50 percent from the field.

He was projected to be off the board with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2026 NBA draft during the latest mock draft from Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman.

For now, Dybantsa will focus on his inaugural year at BYU and look to help the school build upon a 26-10 finish during its 2024-25 campaign.

The Cougars will open their regular season against Villanova on Nov. 3.

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Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby made it clear on Monday that he is sick and tired of the trade rumors surrounding him.

Crosby took some time to meet with local reporters while he was delivering season tickets to fans and confirmed that he wants to be a Penguin. It comes after Pat Brisson, his longtime agent, made some comments to the national media about Crosby’s future last week.

“I don’t take those rumors or some of those things lightly. Like I said, this is where I want to be,” Crosby told reporters. “It’s a special place, and it’s something that is hard to put it all in a soundbite, but it means a lot.”

Crosby has been a Penguin his entire career since he was drafted first overall in the 2005 NHL Draft and doesn’t want that to change. He’s heading into his 21st NHL season this year and is focused on winning, despite the team being in a rebuild.

It’s the way he’s wired, having helped the Penguins win three Stanley Cups during his playing career and having appeared in four Stanley Cup Finals and five Eastern Conference Finals.

The Penguins will open training camp this Thursday, and Crosby will obviously be there with the rest of his teammates as they get set for the regular season. The Penguins will open the regular season against the New York Rangers in Madison Square Garden on October 7.

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