From the moment Kyle Dubas and Brendan Shanahan cracked apart under the pressure of the Maple Leafs, Brad Treliving was the obvious replacement. Shanahan wanted an experienced general manager; Treliving has run a team in Canada, where the game makes us crazy. Treliving is considered a very good guy. Treliving was — and this was a notable advantage — available on short notice.
But that doesn’t mean he’s an upgrade, and it certainly doesn’t mean immediate change. This was a triage hire in the wake of the Dubas-Shanahan implosion, in which their nine-year partnership collapsed in days. It was almost Toronto’s managerial version of, say, the Matthew Tkachuk trade: What’s the best you can you do when you are forced to change?
The answer is Treliving, who has lost the Tkachuk trade so far, and the early guess is that means the crossroads gets kicked down the road. Treliving has been billed as bold, but some of that may be a sort of circumstantial boldness. Asking the 53-year-old to fundamentally change the course of the franchise within weeks seems unrealistic.
But whether Treliving does or doesn’t, this is a big bet for Shanahan in his most uncertain time. It was less than two weeks ago that Shanahan offered Dubas a contract on a Sunday, and told him he was gone on a Friday. The big decisions facing the Leafs haven’t changed since Dubas’s explosive post-season presser, where he said that everything was finally on the table. The answers may have, though.
Shanahan has made big bets before, of course. He fired his NHL mentor in Lou Lamoriello to hire Dubas; he cleaned out the old organization for Lou and Mike Babcock and everything else. The difference now, of course, is the playoff years haven’t been kind, and the stakes are higher now.
And Shanahan is betting on Treliving, who is widely regarded as a hell of a decent man and a decent GM. You can pick apart his nine years in Calgary when it comes to trades and drafts and signings, with some notable bits. He once held the line on salaries with Mark Giordano, but signed some truly wretched veterans in free agency, and some contracts that will weigh heavy as the franchise’s stars age. He dithered enough that Johnny Gaudreau walked for nothing, and was forced into salvaging the Tkachuk trade by forces less within his control. If that’s boldness, it seems those were bold decisions that were either self-inflicted or unavoidable.
You can also caution, however, that Treliving worked under a meddlesome owner in Calgary — some say Murray Edwards hired coach Darryl Sutter and only told Treliving about it afterwards, and Sutter proceeded to make everyone’s life miserable for two years while aiming at Treliving’s job. Sutter and Edwards are the reasons Treliving left.
Beyond that, the Flames are not the Leafs. The Flames don’t have Toronto’s resources, and only partly because their arena is almost literally an antiquated, whimsical barn.
But is Treliving the right man for this moment? Auston Matthews needs a new contract and says he wants to stay, but you can make him the new highest-paid player in hockey without hitting, say, $15 million (U.S.) per season; Nathan MacKinnon has a Cup and makes $12.6 million. William Nylander is also a year away from free agency and will doubtless want a raise. Mitch Marner’s no-move clause kicks in the same day Matthews’s does, and not moving him — or at least entertaining the idea in a way that allows you to gauge the market — means he’s staying for at least two years, too.
It’s not clear that the key to playoff success for pc28¹ÙÍøis to keep the same core players, but to pay them more.
Then there is coach Sheldon Keefe — as Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said, it’s not impossible he returns — the 10 free agents and all the sprawling pieces of the hockey empire Dubas constructed. That Treliving is a very good man should help cushion the blow felt by Dubas loyalists. If so, that could go a ways toward organizational stability.
But Treliving is a safe choice parachuted into an organization where the status quo should very much be in question. Treliving is said to see many component parts of the organization as assets, rather than liabilities. There is an idea within the franchise that if this wasn’t Toronto, then maybe people wouldn’t look at that second-round flop against Florida as a breaking point for the core; that maybe there isn’t a better deal out there to make and letting Matthews, Nylander, Marner and John Tavares try again is the logical path forward — 111-point regular-season teams, after all, aren’t available in bulk.
And there is the worry of making a move just to make one, which is obvious. The problem with that line of thinking is that complacency should be a choice, rather than a crisis default. As the no-moves for Matthews and Marner kick in July 1, along with Nylander’s 10-team trade list, whatever window the Leafs had to explore a radical reshaping of the core of this team may soon be allowed to expire.
Maybe that will work and maybe it won’t, but the bet is fundamentally different now. Treliving has a reputation as an open-minded man, a good man, and a man who very much overthinks and even dithers over things like a fifth defenceman on your AHL team. He allows Shanahan to remain the final managerial say on decisions, and he’s fresh eyes on a roster that is carrying its failures. Treliving wasn’t Toronto’s first choice; that was Dubas. But he’s their choice now.
So the pressure is on Shanahan again, more than ever, in the town where hockey pressure never sleeps. Maybe this time it will be different, full of fresh eyes and no attachment to the past. But the danger might be that the Leafs changed just enough that, in the most meaningful ways, they aren’t going to change at all.
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