SIMMONS: Craig Berube is the new Pat Quinn, the new Pat Burns, with the Maple Leafs (2025)

They had to win Game 2 at home — and eventually won it in overtime — but that came about because of the way they owned the third period. The Ottawa Senators went almost 14 minutes of that final frame, in a game they absolutely needed, without a shot on goal.

The Leafs smothered the middle of the ice. They smothered the front of their net. When there was a shot early in the game, there wasn’t a second or third. The Leafs were taking away shooting lanes. They were blocking shots. They were checking madly. They were playing Berube hockey.

This isn’t the possession hockey that Kyle Dubas and Sheldon Keefe, the former general manager and head coach, came to love. This Leafs team is more old school and Berube certainly leans in that direction.

He likes pucks dumped in deep. He likes pucks dumped out of his own zone. He likes forechecking and to have his players win battles behind the net. He doesn’t want turnovers, in good places or bad.

The Leafs went ahead in the third period on Thursday night after a Morgan Rielly dump-in was corralled by the uber-skilled Mitch Marner, who somehow deflected the puck perfectly to captain Auston Matthews, who scored the goal without Ottawa goalie Linus Ullmark even knowing where the puck was.

Owning the back of the net — that has been part of Matthew Knies’ play in this series and his remarkable development. He goes from dump-in, to back of net, to boards battle, to front of net, often on the same shift. He was credited with a goal that might have been scored by either John Tavares or Matthews had they touched the puck.

He was credited, for a second or two, with scoring the Game 3-winning goal in overtime. Then it was given to Simon Benoit, the unlikely overtime hero for the second game in a row. Benoit shot a seeing-eye puck through a crowd off a Matthews faceoff win and somehow it found net.

Even he wasn’t sure who scored it, but this is what happens in Berube hockey. There’s a place for everyone: Matthews can score from Marner and, on the same night, Benoit can score in the game after setting up Max Domi for the overtime winner in Game 2.

Most of what Berube does seems to work with this team. Even when he makes an odd decision, as he did in the final minute of regulation in Game 3, when he put his fourth line out against Brady Tkachuk and friends.

The fourth line of Scott Laughton, Steven Lorentz and Calle Jarnkrok got through the final 35 seconds, barely. Which meant Berube didn’t have to answer for his decision afterward.

You think of those things when you lose: When you win, it’s just part of the background noise.

How can a coach affect a hockey game that is played at a frenetic pace without time to think about anything? He can by having his team prepared. Prepared on special teams to deliver the way the Leafs have on both the power play and penalty kill in the first three games. Prepared the way they have owned the house — that’s the hockey term for the front of every net. If you own your house, you tend to win.

The Maple Leafs’ team play in their own zone, collapsing in some ways around the goal, has been almost clinical against Ottawa. Which has meant that all Anthony Stolarz has had to stop are first shots. There hasn’t been much sustained offence around him in the series.

The Leafs do things differently defensively than they have in other seasons with similar rosters. The defenceman-to-defenceman cross-ice pass, so calmly executed, has made many breakouts look like they’re drawn up on a board. Two passes and out.

And when they can’t make the pass out of their zone, the old Scotty Bowman dump-out has been effective as well for the Leafs.

Berube wants his players to be on the right side of the puck. That isn’t something that comes naturally to anyone. But how much open ice have the Senators had in the series, how many puck battles have they won? How is it that in the third period of games the Sens desperately needed to be great in, they haven’t been able to get much of anything going?

The Leafs allowed them two shots against in the third period of Game 3, four against in Game 2. That is basically spectacular defensive hockey.

And this is what Craig Berube has brought to this team. Three playoff games coached as a Maple Leaf, three playoff wins. Berube is the new Pat Burns, the new Pat Quinn. Different styles, different ways, same kind of results.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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