TORONTO

Jonathan Bernier and James Reimer have played a combined 350 NHL games — or 350 more than their new goaltending coach Steve Briere.

But Maple Leafs management believes Briere is just the man to make the coming season and beyond more productive and meaningful for the duo. It’s because Briere has no NHL pedigree that made him approach netminding as a player, and later instructor, from a different angle.

The journey to the Air Canada Centre has taken the 38-year-old to every pro league in North America, as well as the NCAA and two stints in Great Britain. But he has hit it off already with Bernier and Reimer, who’ve visited his off-season quarters in Minnesota and both went home with a mental checklist for the summer.

“Obviously, I was not an elite goalie,” said Briere in a phone interview on Monday. “I’m 5-foot-8 and when I played I was a hundred and nothing pounds. So I had to be well prepared and better prepared than anyone else.

“On the teams I played on, everyone was trying to steal your job every day. So you gave everything you had every day. I took that (philosophy) into coaching.”

The Winnipeg-born Briere is a bit of a departure from Leafs predecessors such as Francois Allaire, champion of the butterfly, Steve McKichan and two NHL veterans, Rick Wamsley and the most recent firing, Rick St. Croix. The Leafs cast a wide net for someone to get Reimer to play more consistently and bring Bernier back to his 2013-14 form, if either are to play here beyond next season.

Leafs scout Garth Malarchuk, whose NHL brother Clint knew Briere, had been talking to Briere about 2015 draft prospects in the NAHL where he was coaching in Topeka. Three goalies on the verge of breaking into the NHL, Rasmus Tirronen in Carolina, Zane McIntyre in Boston and Zach Nagelvoort in Edmonton, all had links to Briere and he’s helped a few others on the rise.

Impressed, Malarchuk passed his name along to interim general manager Kyle Dubas. Briere flew to Toronto and nailed a face-to-face interview with head coach Mike Babcock and was hired a couple of weeks ago.

It helped familiarize him with Babcock when he mentioned his working experience with Malarchuk and other respected goalie coaches such as Mitch Korn and former Leaf Wayne Thomas, a minor-league manager before taking NHL positions with St. Louis and San Jose. Briere was briefly coached by Randy Carlyle in Manitoba.

“We’ll keep the process going through the summer,” Briere said of talking to Babcock and management.

He has also reviewed notes with the Marlies fine goalie instructor Piero Greco, who has been working with Antoine Bibeau, Chris Gibson and Garret Sparks on the farm, also interviewed for the Leaf job.

But Briere’s focus at present is getting a handle on Bernier and Reimer. Two years ago, Bernier had a .923 save percentage, a Leafs record since the league began keeping the stat, and was standing square to the shooter, swallowing pucks into his Leaf crest. That positioning and overall communication with the defence suffered at times last season.

Reimer, in a longer tenure in Toronto, has been all over the map, improving in some areas, but having constant troubles in areas such as rebound control.

Yet Briere didn’t lecture the two about making big changes to their form during the Minnesota meetings.

“Instead of going right in and saying, ‘I want to do it this way’, we’re going to have a collaboration,” Briere said. “I know what I want to do, I have a plan. But we’re going to break it down; mental, vision, technical, You’ve got to see it all and then you have to put it together. You can’t just plug a hole in a bucket of water that is leaking in different places. You want to do something comprehensive.

“There are many different ways to stop a puck and everyone goes about it a different way. Myself (and the goalies) will develop our plan together. The two of them are hard-working people and good people, which you’ve heard Mike say we want to build with in Toronto. James stayed over at our house and met my family. He’s been great to work with.”

There are some issues all goalies can identify with, no matter their NHL experience.

“It helps them to know that I have been in a 1-1 game with big points on the line, too,” Briere said. “You’re fighting for your job, there’s a financial side to the game ... there’s an empathy there.”

MONEY TALKS

The last big contract for the Maple Leafs will be settled this week, one way or another.

Goaltender Jonathan Bernier’s salary arbitration hearing is set for Friday. Because the club filed for this process, it must accept the arbitrator’s one-year decision with no walkaway option. Coming up to his 27th birthday in a couple of weeks, Bernier won five fewer games (21) than the year before and saw his team record save percentage of .923 drop to .912.

The arbitrator’s decision will take into account Bernier’s $3.4 million US salary last season and what some goalies in his peer group are making. It’s reasonable to assume Bernier will get a raise in the million-dollar range. Bernier’s agent Patrick Brisson and Leafs management will be at the hearing, though it could be settled earlier, right up until the start of the hearing.

It remains to be seen if the arrival of new general manager Lou Lamoriello last week will see a change in the Leafs’ stance. Lamoriello was known as a tough negotiator in New Jersey, but it seems the course was set on seeing the arbitration through when the club filed in June.