William Nylander makes his feelings known about Craig Berube's angry message to Maple Leafs bench

By ARJUN B

Modified Nov 13, 2024 05:47 GMT

The Toronto Maple Leafs suffered a disappointing 3-0 shutout loss against the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena, dropping their record to 9-6-2 record on the season.

During the game, Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube was visibly frustrated with his team's performance, at one point yelling from behind the bench:

"Let's f**king go, wake the f**k up!"

After the game, forward William Nylander was asked about Berube's emotional outburst, and Nylander appeared to understand his coach's frustration.

"I mean, you just hear him talking. I don't see what he's doing back there or whatever. ... But I think it's great, you know. Sometimes, it's called for and the team needs a little bit of a wake-up call. That's great," Nylander said.

On the team’s performance against the Senators, William Nylander added:

"I think they were just on top of us, skating better that what we were tonight, you know, creating a lot of good scoring chances. From their side, we weren't, they move, I felt like and making nice crisp plays ther we needed to break through pressure."

Nylander also emphasized that the players need to stay connected and take more shots on goal.

It was a lackluster performance overall for the Maple Leafs, who were shut out and outshot 41-27 by the Senators. Michael Amadio, Josh Norris and Tim Stutzle scored for the Senators. Goaltender Linus Ullmark stopped 27 shots for Ottawa to secure the shutout, while Anthony Stolarz made 38 saves for the Leafs.

Craig Berube comments about William Nylander's performance after missing Monday's practice

William Nylander missed practice on Monday due to an undisclosed issue, sparking speculation about his health. However, Berube downplayed Nylander's absence from practice, saying:

"Willy showed bursts of things when he had the puck and did some things, but I am not going to get into all of that about why he wasn’t at practice the other day. He was fine to play. That is the bottom line."

Berube was critical of the team's overall effort in the loss, even calling it nearly their worst performance of the season.

"There wasn’t much good to talk about with the game overall. We got outskated. They wanted it more than us. That is the bottom line...

He also pointed out that losing in other games was different because they didn’t have control over this one.

Next, the Maple Leafs will face the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night.