By Sam Bush
So, Craig Berube still doesn’t know why he was fired as Flyers coach.
Earth to Berube:
You were fired because your team either underachieved itself out of the playoffs or just wasn’t good enough.
In either event, someone had to take the fall for the formerly fantastic Flyers missing the postseason for the second year in the last three.
And Ed Snider isn’t firing Paul Holmgren, who as general manager doled out big buck contracts to anyone who walked in his office and made horrible acquisition like stand-up comic/goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.
Berube was “surprised” to be fired and plans on meeting with Hextall to get a better understanding of why he was let go. “I’ll go in at some point and sit down with him and talk about things,” he told Angelo Cataldi on WIP.
Hey Craig, you are the only one who was surprised.
Berube again denied a late-season Daily News report that suggested the real reason goalie coach Jeff Reese left the Flyers on March 6 is because of an argument with Berube over goalie Steve Mason returning too soon from knee surgery.
“That (Feb. 26) game in Toronto was overblown when I put him in there,” Berube said. “Nobody knows anything. They just speculate and write things that aren’t true.” Asked if he and Reese had an issue, Berube responded, “Nope. Not at all. That was a mutual agreement that he had with the hockey team and he left. That’s a private, private, private thing.”
He also has no regrets on his handling of disgruntled veteran Vincent Lecavalier, a natural center with 411 career goals who this season usually played fourth-line right wing and was a healthy scratch 17 times. “I did what was best for the team with Vinny,” he said. “I thought that I gave him ample opportunity to produce and to perform. And I pulled him out of the middle of the ice because I didn’t feel that he could perform at the level that I needed him to (perform) to play that position. … The team is the most important thing and that’s exactly how I played that card.”
Berube wants to coach again in the NHL, preferably as a head coach but possibly as an assistant. “I want to coach and that means you’ve gotta move on and maybe coach in another city,” he said. “In the right situation I might (take an assistant job). It would have to be the right situation with the right coach.”
