Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube looks on during a game against the Buffalo Sabres in Buffalo, on April 15.Jeffrey T. Barnes/The Associated Press After leading Ottawa’s Game 5 win over Toronto, goalie Linus Ullmark showed up for his postgame presser in a maroon three-piece suit and a brown felt hat with a brim so wide it was suitable for beekeeping. It’s one thing to get beaten. It’s another to get beaten by a guy who dresses like he’s in Dick Tracy. Having watched him operate for the past week or so, one begins to understand why Ullmark has had trouble settling in the NHL. He has the sort of dreamy, oddball personality you don’t see in the macho hive-mind of hockey. For instance, someone asked him to imagine himself in the Leafs’ shoes right now, and he did it. “If you go up 2-0 or 3-1 or whatever it may be, you can’t get too high and think it’s going to be an easy task ahead of you,” Ullmark said. “Also, if you’re losing and you’re down, you can’t get too low and start doing random stuff out there.” These are not original ideas, but only a few people sound convincing when they say them. With Ullmark, you get the impression of listening to someone who believes what he says. One can picture this guy not getting too down when things aren’t going great. That is a superpower among athletes, and what separates the talented from the winners. There is one person on the Leafs who talks like that, and he isn’t technically on the team – head coach Craig Berube. When Berube was hired by the Leafs last spring, he was the leading candidate for two reasons. He’d once turned a mediocre team into a great one for two months, and he was unemployed. Aside from that famous Cup run with St. Louis, teams coached by Berube haven’t ventured very far into the spring. Four postseasons, two playoff rounds won. It’s not much of an aggregate record for a 59-year-old. Berube hasn’t won everywhere he goes – the ultimate coaching compliment. He hasn’t developed any sort of proprietary system. He isn’t a star whisperer or a goalie guru or a shepherd of young talent. Berube does just one thing very well – he sounds like he believes in himself. Saying you believe in yourself is easy because everybody expects you to do it. The Leafs have turned it into a mantra, most often deployed right after they’ve lost again. But sounding like you mean it is another thing. Berube hasn’t needed to deploy the force of his belief until now. There have been no extended dips, and absolutely zero crises during his first year. So nobody had seen him work his rhetorical trick until Tuesday night. No team that’s leading a series 3-2 is in big trouble, but the Leafs are a special team. They’re not just leading Ottawa 3-2. They are somehow in free fall because of it. It’s in the 1,000-yard stares of some players, and the out-of-place grins of others. It’s there when Mitch Marner says, “It’s not supposed to be easy.” Yes, it is. That’s what being good at something is like. It’s there when Auston Matthews says, “There’s no panic in this room” so fast that it sounds like he’s saying a lavishly syllabled German word that means a room that is filled with panic. The only Leaf who didn’t sound like he was going home to stare balefully out a second-floor window was Berube. “I’m not feeling anything,” Berube said when someone tried to tease a feeling from him. Hard to do, but it had the ring of truth. I believe the man when he says he feels nothing. Berube sounded the same as he does after a game in November. Same half-bored delivery. Same shrugs. Same hooded looks. If you are a Leafs fans, Berube was reassuring in his blandness. It’s certainly better than watching Sheldon Keefe saying he feels fine, just fine, while chewing off his upper lip. Berube’s had the job a year, but all his work begins in the hours between Games 5 and 6. His function is to believe in the Leafs. That sounds simple, but it requires a titanic act of will. Nobody who’s watched any hockey since Jimi Hendrix played Woodstock can believe in the Leafs. You can say you do, but nobody believes you. That’s the problem with belief and this team. It exists a priori, or it doesn’t exist at all. There is no proof of it. So why should Berube believe in the Leafs? He shouldn’t, but that’s his job. They’re paying him millions of dollars so that three or four dozen guys (I’m counting all the executives and scouts) can climb up on his back in their moment of doubt. Theoretically, he carries them through the bit that scares them. Berube only gets a single chance at this. If he fails this one time, no one will believe his belief again, including the guys on his own team. It’s one or done. I believe Berube believes the Leafs will win on Thursday night. If they lose on Thursday, I believe he believes they will win on Saturday. I also believe that no one else on the Leafs believes that. I think they all believe they’re doomed. Game 6 isn’t about who’s got the best specialty teams units or whose goalie plays better, though those things matter. It’s about who believes most. If the Leafs can manage it, their coach gets the credit. If not, they all take the blame.