Maple Leafs fans should be worried if the Leafs hire Todd McLellan (2024)

While Todd McLellan would be an intriguing option for the Maple Leafs, they should put all their eggs in the Craig Berube basket instead, based on McLellan's checkered past.

With the Sheldon Keefe era done and dusted, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be looking to usher in a new dawn with a brand new coach behind the bench in 2024-25. While Keefe did an admirable job during the regular season, he was never able to propel the club further than the first round outside of 2023 - where they won just one game in second round.

There are plenty of interesting names on the open market that have been linked to Toronto. Berube is probably the most coveted head coach right now and it would be wise for the Leafs to act as quickly as possible before another team scoops him up, like the New Jersey Devils.

McLellan is another coach that has drawn a lot of interest and while he brings about a lot of regular season success, his playoff resume is severely lacking. He currently holds a record of 598-412-134 in 1,144 games that spans parts of 16 seasons with the San Jose Sharks, Edmonton Oilers, and Los Angeles Kings.

He's made 9 playoff appearances with 6 of them coming in his first 6 seasons. Since then he's only pushed his club to the playoffs 3 times in parts of 10 seasons and has advanced past the first round just once since 2016-17.

McLellan had early success with the Sharks when he took them to the Conference Finals in 2010 and 2011 but only reached the second round twice after the fact. In essence, he has as many series victories as the Maple Leafs do in the last 10 years. In San Jose he had the likes of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, and Joe Pavelski. In Edmonton he had Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. In Los Angeles he had Anze Kopitar, Adrian Kempe, and Kevin Fiala. On-ice talent was never an issue.

Once he's been relieved of his coaching duties, the organization tends to succeed in short order. The year after he was fired by the Sharks, they made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, followed up by a second round and third round elimination in 2018 and 2019. After he was let go by Edmonton, they have made the playoffs in 5 straight seasons and haven't had a points percentage lower than 58.5%. Mums the word in Los Angeles for the time being but they had too much front-end talent that was being squandered.

While things can certainly change on a whim, McLellan has shown that he is unable to get the job done when it's needed the most. He has been afforded several great teams over his career - especially the early 2010 San Jose Sharks - but couldn't do much of anything come playoff time, which has been a severe problem in Toronto.

Berube should be the top priority this summer and Brad Treliving should do everything in his power to make it happen because the alternatives and consolation prizes after the fact won't bring about much hope.

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