Oilers already linked to Craig Berube after Maple Leafs firing
Craig Berube hasn't been out of work a week, and his name is already floating around the Edmonton Oilers head coaching vacancy.
This morning, Oilers insider Bob Stauffer dropped Berube into the mix alongside Bruce Cassidy and Peter Laviolette as candidates to take over behind Edmonton's bench.
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Darren Dreger followed by flagging the former Leafs bench boss as a name worth watching in the Oilers search. Two reliable voices, same direction. That rarely happens by accident.
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The fit makes sense on paper. Edmonton finished 41-30-11 for 93 points, second in the Pacific but only 14th overall, with a goal differential of plus-13 that screams average.
That's the part that should worry fans in Alberta. A roster built around Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is not supposed to sit middle-of-the-pack defensively. It did anyway.
McDavid still posted 48 goals and 138 points. Draisaitl piled up 97 points in 65 games. The stars did their part. The structure around them never showed up.
Why a defensive coach for a team built on speed raises eyebrows
Berube's calling card is structure, grinding hockey, and accountability. He won a Cup in St. Louis with that blueprint and brought the same system to Toronto last summer.
In Toronto, the approach went sideways. The Leafs went 32-36-14, sit 28th overall with a -46 goal differential, and limped into their last stretch on a seven-game losing skid.
Auston Matthews, the franchise centerpiece, produced 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games at minus-4. His L10 line read one goal across ten. Numbers a $13.25 million cap hit doesn't justify.
Plug the same blueprint into Edmonton and the question lands twice as hard. Does a defensive-first system actually free up McDavid, or chain him to the wall?
The captain carries a $12.5 million cap hit. Draisaitl sits at $14 million annually. You don't pay that twice over to play conservative hockey on every breakout.
Edmonton wants playoff experience and a Cup pedigree. Berube checks both boxes. The same boxes didn't keep him safe in Toronto when the math turned ugly.
The Oilers got six games of playoff hockey out of their captain this spring. He posted six points and a minus-8. That's the version Edmonton needs fixed, not frozen.
If Stauffer and Dreger are both circling the same name this quickly, something is moving in the background. Whether Stan Bowman pulls the trigger is the next question.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 14, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Nick Suzuki | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Juraj Slafkovsky | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Ivan Demidov | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Mitch Marner | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Shea Theodore | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Phillip Danault | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Lane Hutson | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Josh Anderson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Josh Doan | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jake Evans | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mikael Granlund | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Konsta Helenius | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Brett Howden | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexandre Texier | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jason Zucker | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||