A false report suggested David Carle was close to becoming the Toronto Maple Leafs’ next head coach. But David Carle is not a candidate for the job, and two NHL insiders pushed back on the chatter after the Maple Leafs had only a “pleasant conversation.”
The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t just stumble through the 2025-26 season—they fell apart. sliding to the bottom of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. Expectations had been high enough that many believed they could still finish first in the division and make a long run in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Instead, the season unraveled, and it ended with the firing of head coach Craig Berube. The Maple Leafs have not named a replacement since.
That vacancy is where the speculation took off. A false report claimed the hiring of University of Denver head coach David Carle was imminent. It came from a fake account.
A second rumor followed a different path—one that sounded more official. A minor-league play-by-play announcer said that Carle’s signing by the Leafs was close to fruition. Two NHL insiders quickly shut that down.
Frank Servalli said the Maple Leafs had a “pleasant conversation” with Carle—but framed it as nothing more than that. Carle also made his position clear to Toronto: he told the Leafs he was not a candidate for the head coaching job, and he declined an invitation to interview.
NHL reporter Chris Johnston of The Athletic added that Carle was also not a candidate. Johnston posted on X that there is “no smoke” behind the idea that Carle was going to become the next Maple Leafs head coach.
The background matters, because the Maple Leafs’ search has unfolded alongside another major shift in the organization. Toronto recently hired John Chayka as its new general manager. That move surprised many fans. largely because Chayka had been out of the league after being dismissed from his previous position by the Arizona Coyotes.
Chayka has been viewed as an outsider, and that profile fueled the same kind of hope that produced the Carle rumor in the first place—namely, that Toronto could go after a longshot candidate.
But Carle isn’t that candidate. He remains the Denver head coach, and the people trying to connect him to Toronto’s vacancy have been left answering to the same blunt reality: he is not pursuing the job, and the Leafs’ interest—if it can be called that—has not gone beyond a conversation.
The sequence is stark. After a disastrous 2025-26 season and the firing of Craig Berube, Toronto is still waiting for its next head coach. In the noise around that wait, multiple stories put David Carle at the center of the next step. The response from within the hockey world has been consistent: Carle isn’t a candidate. he declined to interview. and the “soon” reports don’t hold up.
Toronto Maple Leafs David Carle Craig Berube John Chayka NHL rumors head coach search Atlantic Division Eastern Conference