Photo credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

Craig Berube was very blunt following the Leafs’ disastrous showing and poor effort against the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night.

A day after dismantling the Tampa Bay Lightning at home in Toronto, the Maple Leafs found themselves down 2-0 less than seven minutes into Tuesday’s game in Columbus, and down 5-0 after 30 minutes.

Even though they started slow on Tuesday, it appeared that Berube felt that a timeout wasn’t going to fix the situation. The Leafs had dug themselves a hole too deep to get out of. Following his team’s 6-2 loss, Berube offered up very blunt analysis of his team’s poor showing.
“I didn’t feel like we skated well tonight. They skated through us all night. We didn’t win many puck battles tonight. We didn’t defend very well. That is what you get. The only thing that was good tonight was the penalty kill. It is a bad game all around. We have to move on from it. There are probably a couple of things we could take out of that game and learn a little bit from it from a systems standpoint, but it boils down to them out-skating us, out-working us, and being a harder team than we were. Bottom line.”
 

Berube, like Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner, was asked if playing three games in four nights and on the second game of a back-to-back with travel had an impact on the energy levels of the team.

 
“That is an excuse, though, isn’t it? I am not going there.”
Needless to say, he wasn’t buying into the excuse of fatigue. The Leafs will have to regroup quickly from their worst game of the season as they are back in action Thursday against Berube’s former team, the St. Louis Blues, before a first-round rematch with the Boston Bruins on Saturday.