Easton Cowan's comments about Craig Berube are causing major reactions
Easton Cowan didn't duck Craig Berube after the firing, and that says plenty about how Toronto's rookie winger saw his first NHL season.
Cowan called Berube a good coach and said he helped him simplify the game. Then he went a step further and said the mess in Toronto was an organizational decision, not one person or one player.
That's the line that sticks.
A young player could've stayed vague there. Cowan didn't. He pushed the blame out wider, and in this market, that changes the read on Berube's exit.
Cowan played 66 games and finished with 11 goals and 29 points in his first NHL season. That's enough runway for his voice to carry some weight inside this conversation.
He also chipped in 2 power-play goals and 1 game-winner. Berube clearly trusted him enough to keep feeding him real NHL minutes instead of hiding him on the edges.
Toronto finished 32-36-14 and dragged a 7-game losing streak over the line. No coach gets through that kind of collapse clean, but Cowan's quote says the room knew this ran deeper.
«Obviously we had a tough year. He's was a good coach. I learned a lot from him, and he taught me how to simplify the game and just little things around the game.
I just feel like, like I said, it's an organization as a whole. It's not just one person, not just one player. It's just, you know, as a whole, and unfortunately it's part of the business.»
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Easton Cowan just made a surprising statement about Craig Berube
This is where his comment matters most. He didn't just thank Berube on the way out. He pushed back on the easy version of events.
The Maple Leafs gave up 299 goals. Teams don't bleed that badly because of one voice behind the bench.
They also scored 253 goals, and Cowan still found a way to produce 29 of his own points as a first-year winger. That doesn't sound like a player burying a coach who held him back.
Cowan finished with a -5 rating, so this wasn't some polished rookie season without rough nights. Berube's message about simplifying the game matched what Cowan was still trying to learn at this level.
That's why his answer lands harder than a standard goodbye. He didn't turn Berube into a shield, but he also refused to make him the lone reason this season went off the rails.
And that leaves pressure where Toronto probably didn't want it.
Berube is gone. Cowan's words make it a lot tougher to sell that as the whole fix. When a rookie says the problem was bigger than one coach, people in that organization should listen.
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MAY 13, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Nick Foligno | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Parker Kelly | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Brett Kulak | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Matthew Boldy | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Brent Burns | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Martin Necas | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Nico Sturm | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Jack Drury | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Marcus Johansson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Quinn Hughes | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Kirill Kaprizov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nicolas Roy | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Devon Toews | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Ahcan | - | - | - | |
| Mackenzie Blackwood | - | - | - | |
| Ross Colton | - | - | - | |
| Brock Faber | - | - | - | |
| Marcus Foligno | - | - | - | |
| Ryan Hartman | - | - | - | |
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