Brad Treliving: The safe, comfortable choice for the Maple Leafs

There was no way the Maple Leafs were going to go off the board with this hire. Not when so many decisions that will chart the future course of this franchise have to be made

Brad Treliving has been around the block a few hundred times and that’s what made him appealing to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

For the first nine years of his tenure as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Brendan Shanahan was not the least bit afraid to make bold moves that put the franchise on the cutting edge of the hockey industry. He was quick to embrace analytics and diversity hirings, surrounding himself with people who might not have had much of an NHL track record, but were full of really good ideas.

But when it came to replacing Kyle Dubas and hiring the 18^th GM in franchise history, Shanahan went about as safe and down-the-middle as he possibly could. In hiring former Calgary Flames GM Brad Treliving, Shanahan is bringing in someone with a ton of experience, but not a ton of winning. Sure, we could spend a fair amount of time pointing out Treliving’s questionable moves, but the fact remains that if you’ve been involved in this game at a managerial level long enough, your list of multi-million dollar mistakes is about as long as your triumphs. Nothing unusual about Treliving there.

In fact, there’s nothing unusual about Treliving at all. There’s not a lot of ‘wow’ factor, either. And the fact that Shanahan didn’t get creative and hire an Eric Tulsky or another lesser-known executive with untapped potential is a product of circumstance. It’s easy to try to prove you’re the smartest guy in the room when you’re building something from scratch and you can afford to take risks. But when you are at as crucial a juncture in the competitive cycle as the Toronto Maple Leafs are, the situation calls for someone who is not attending his first rodeo.

And if that were the main criterion for filling the job, Treliving is a good choice. You can’t go out and hire Julien BriseBois or Doug Armstrong if they’re not available. And while it’s doubtful that the image-conscious Maple Leafs would have ever done it, Stan Bowman remains uncertain because the NHL has not yet cleared him to work in the league.

The Maple Leafs need Treliving because, as the kids say, there’s a shit-ton of work to do here and not a lot of time to ruminate over a couple of decisions that will chart the course for this franchise. The most pressing of those comes down to the futures of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, spectacular regular-season talents who have both had crucial and long periods of low/non-productivity at the most important times of the year. Treliving doesn’t have the luxury of making a few tweaks here and there, since both Matthews and Marner have no-move clauses that kick in July 1, which means they’ll assume an enormous amount of control over their futures.

Treliving will also bring with him an air of stability and calm that will probably do some good for the franchise right about now. Both the adulation shown toward Dubas and the notion that the franchise has been cast adrift amid organizational chaos by his departure are something of a stretch. Anyone who truly believes the Leafs are in disarray in 2023 because of a spat where the GM overplayed his hand and the president overreacted to the power move has never cracked open a book about this team’s history. Things have been worse. Much worse. That being said, the Leafs could use a steady hand at the helm right now and Treliving provides that.

They’ll also need someone who can tolerate and negotiate through the levels of approval that are needed at the behemoth known as Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. The layers in the front office and the competing interests that own this team often make it difficult for the Maple Leafs go get out of their own way. That was one of the things that stuck in Dubas’ craw and he probably had a decent point there. Is Shanahan too involved in hockey decisions? Almost certainly, but that’s part of the deal in Toronto. For example, after Dubas was told his services were no longer required and before Treliving was hired, it was Shanahan who came out and announced that he had already told the Core Four – Matthews, Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares – that his inclination was to bring all four of them back next season.

Which kind of makes you wonder why the Leafs even need a GM in the first place if Shanahan – and the company’s board of directors – are going to tie you to such a large commitment. It’s pretty unfathomable that Treliving would come in start making bold moves such as dealing one of those players because he likely knows any attempt to do so would be a futile effort.

(Notice we haven’t said anything about how Treliving is uniquely suited to deal with the pressure cooker that is the Toronto market? There’s a reason for that. It’s a bunch of hooey. If anything, this market unconditionally loves this team so much that it will endure any amount of disappointment and failure. It has done so time and again. Anyone who uses the excuse of dealing with the fans and media in the Toronto market for the team’s lack of success is lazily using a crutch that even this organization has used for far too long.)

Among the, well, less refined constituency that follows this team, there is the notion that MLSE is nothing but a money-making machine that could not possibly care less about winning as long as the funds keep flowing in by the bucketful. They’re only half right. MLSE likes money. A lot, a lot, a lot. But it’s also desperate to win a Stanley Cup. The only problem is that for the better part of the past 50-plus years, it has had no clue how to go about it. Whether bringing Treliving in to run the hockey operations – pending Shanahan’s and the board’s approval – represents another extended run of futility or results in a long-coveted championship remains to be seen. But it’s clear that Shanahan and the board believe that thinking outside the box is not the path to go at the moment.