Maple Leafs fire Craig Berube

“Craig is a tremendous coach and an even better person,” said Chayka. “This decision is more reflective of an organizational shift and an opportunity for a fresh start than it is an evaluation of Craig. We are grateful for his leadership, professionalism and commitment to the Maple Leafs organization and wish Craig and his family nothing but the best moving forward.”

The club’s next head coach will determine the makeup of the remainder of the coaching staff.

While this news broke, I was listening to 32 Thoughts where the topic was the situation with the Oilers reportedly wanting to talk to Bruce Cassidy but being denied by Vegas. Since this will be a thing on people's minds, I'll discuss that here.

First: When a coach or executive is under contract in the NHL, they are not allowed to talk to any other team about a job. Many people are really upset that John Chayka did that very thing.

When a coach is "fired" they aren't fired like you are from your gig at your office, they are relieved of their duties. You hear that phrase used explicitly. They aren't the coach, but they still have a contract and are bound by it.

Until the contract is up, the team has to agree to allow the person to interview for other jobs. If there is term on the contract beyond this year (which runs to June 30) then the NHL negotiates a deal between the new team that hires the person and the old team for how much is paid by whom to fulfill that contract.

To use the obvious example, if Berube is offered a job – and the Leafs would almost certainly leap out of their chairs to give permission for any interview – they would still have to pay him something on his remaining two years, but not all of it.

The Leafs are doing Berube a favour by doing this now when other teams are actively interviewing. Which leads to Cassidy, who has one more year on his contract.

Elliotte Friedman reports that as of last night, he believed both the LA Kings and the Oilers have asked to talk to Cassidy. He does not believe that Vegas has said no, not ever in response, but there is a delay for some reason. That reason isn't known.

What is interesting to consider is that, as Friedman mentioned, the Oilers are not leaking this information, so someone else is.

That's the contract status as of now for all interested parties.

Offseason