I can't say it was a pleasure, Brad (Chris Young / Canadian Press)
Ding-dong, the witch is dead.
In the midst of the Toronto Maple Leafs' worst season in a decade, management decided to take the unexpected drastic step to fire the team's general manager, Brad Treliving, with just seven games remaining until the calendar flips on the nightmarish 2025-26 campaign. After weeks of intense speculation regarding the future direction of the Maple Leafs, the fire was stoked by the decision to sack a man who largely held the good graces of Toronto's faithful as recently as one year ago. However, losing breeds contempt and hockey can be a relentless merry-go-round of personnel if the virtuous circle of success subsides. Whether Treliving ought to be deemed the primary culprit in the Leafs' failure to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016 is irrelevant; to be frank, he had utterly failed to keep the roster as competitive as it should have been and he did not warrant the trust of his superiors to lead the Leafs through another crucial offseason after his questionable performance at the March trade deadline.
It is easy to forget about the remarkable optimism that permeated the fanbase at this point last year. Despite several glaring red flags under the hood in Craig Berube's first season in charge, most of which were laughed off as a bunch of hooey by fans that had grown tired of the constant letdowns of the Kyle Dubas regime's data-centric philosophy, the Leafs had just won their first-ever Atlantic Division title and were scheduled to play the Ottawa Senators in the first round. The Sens, who are rightfully considered the annoyingly pathetic baby brother who never learned how to knock out their older sibling even when the older child turned to drugs and alcoholism, seemed like the perfect punching bag for a team that could have been poised to make a long Stanley Cup run. Although the series was tightly fought, the Leafs prevailed over the Senators through a fair share of instantly historic moments in modern Toronto sports canon, such as Max Domi and Simon Benoit's respective overtime winners as well as Max Pacioretty's Game 6 dagger to put Ottawa on the brink. For the second time in over two decades, the Leafs were moving onto the second round of the postseason with their spirits as high as they possibly could have been.
Even the series against the Florida Panthers seemed like it could be marking a significant reversal of the poor fortune that had plagued Leafs Nation for years. After impressively holding on against the Panthers' onslaught to take the first two games at home, the Leafs struck early into Game 3 in Florida's own barn and eventually got out to a commanding 3-1 lead early in the second period. However, Florida unleashed their renowned fastball, putting Toronto into a vice grip and eventually ending the game on a pinball Brad Marchand overtime winner. After that, things fell apart rather quickly. Among other factors, an unpunished check to the head of the Leafs' red-hot goalie Anthony Stolarz and a historic dud in Game 7 in front of their home crowd left the Maple Leafs with a familiar feeling of disappointment in the handshake line. The Panthers, as we all know, stormed their way to a second consecutive Stanley Cup, never needing another Game 7 to dispatch an opponent and never facing another two-game series deficit.
And so it was that a Maple Leafs team that had finally sorted out its playoff power play and had constructed a goaltending tandem that was the envy of most of the NHL came to the same sorry end that had befallen the franchise for the entirety of the 21st century. With that being said, all was not lost. Barring the truly horrific no-show in the winner-take-all Game 7, there was genuinely reason to believe that a Brad Treliving-led front office could potentially be the group to lead this club to the promised land. Yet the seams had already started to show in the Treliving project.
Craig Berube has led the Leafs to their worst season in 10 years (John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
I would never expect all hockey fans to be full-fledged analytics truthers. Naturally, I think data science has a significant role in the management of an NHL team in our modern era, but even I would fight back against the theory that the eye test is entirely irrelevant nowadays. Nevertheless, the Leafs' new Treliving-sponsored approach had gone way too far in the "dinosaur" direction. After consistently ranking in a tier with Cup contenders for shot and chance metrics under Sheldon Keefe and Mike Babcock, Berube, who had been hired by Treliving in 2024-25 to switch up the messaging, led Toronto to 16th in expected goals for percentage (xGF%), a placement that is generally consistent with fringe playoff teams. In the analytics era, the 2017-18 Washington Capitals were the only Stanley Cup champion with a sub-50% expected goal share; the Berube Leafs had a mark of 49.82% last year (per Natural Stat Trick). Berube's counter-punch hockey led to some thrilling close victories, in the regular season and the playoffs, but his style severely hamstrung the Leafs' capability to detonate on their opponents. Under Berube last year, Auston Matthews had his lowest goal total as an NHLer (eventually pipped for last place by his goalscoring numbers under Berube this year). Their team save percentage of .926 at even strength was only bettered by the Winnipeg Jets, who had the Hart Trophy winner manning the pipes for most of their games. Their 102.06 PDO (third highest in the league) indicated that there could be some negative regression to the mean regarding their puck luck. That stat was personified by the Maple Leafs' league-best, yet obviously inimitable 22-4-4 record in one-goal games. Regardless of the warning signs, results-based analysis trumps all in this industry and the season was considered a resounding success and immutable proof of the merits behind Treliving's hiring in the spring of 2023.
The vast majority of Leafs fans (myself included, despite my personal qualms with Treliving's prior asset management and Berube's suppressing style of dump-and-chase, as documented on my Twitter account) believed that a well-orchestrated offseason could keep the team in the hunt for glory. In hindsight, expecting a masterstroke from a man who had ended the Calgary Flames' dominance atop the Pacific was our first mistake. Treliving's hit rate on free agency signings had been spotty at best. Anthony Stolarz, irrespective of this year's inconsistent form, absolutely paid back the two-year deal signed by Treliving, but the four-year extension could get ugly if he can't resemble his 2024 self. Chris Tanev was fantastic in his first year with the Blue and White, though it came at the cost of a six-year (!) deal that is aging extremely poorly. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is the only true unqualified success and even then, it felt like a gimme after he had just won the Cup the previous year. Beyond those three, the John Klingberg bet was an unmitigated disaster and an obvious demonstration of administrative mismanagement, given how evident it was that he was injured when Treliving put pen to paper (throw Ryan Reaves in this category as well). Tyler Bertuzzi was disappointing as a pricey option next to Matthews and Mitch Marner. The most damning trend in Treliving's free agency transactions was his tendency to offer unprovoked "loyalty bonuses" to players that were replaceable at much cheaper costs. Max Domi had moments in his first year, but the four-year, $15 million extension signed the year after looks borderline criminal now. Simon Benoit had been the worst defender in the league by most metrics before Treliving offered him a deal and followed that up with another pricey extension; Benoit's inability to move the puck has crippled Toronto's rush offense in two consecutive seasons. Steven Lorentz was an absolute fan favourite after being picked up on a PTO, but Treliving characteristically guaranteed him $4 million over three years with a small sample size, despite the fact that he is realistically a 13th forward on a Cup-contending roster. Treliving's 2025 summer could have certified the Leafs' placement within the Atlantic hierarchy with thoughtful upgrades in certain spots, namely depth defenseman and a true middle-six center. He instead opted to keep all of "his guys" at a higher dollar value.
The trade market was the other potential avenue for the front office to address some of the holes that had been exposed by Florida's indefatigably dogged depth forwards during May's seven game showdown. On this front, Treliving had already played his cards and had exhausted the most intriguing possibilities at the previous season's trade deadline. I'll get into the minutiae of his horrendous trade track record in a moment, but, long story short, he had already dealt Toronto's most promising young assets for two players (Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo) who definitely do not register as needle-movers. During an offseason where useful contributors like K'Andre Miller, Noah Dobson, J.J. Peterka, Trevor Zegras, Charlie Coyle, Mason Marchment, Viktor Arvidsson, Ryan Poehling, Jordan Spence, Josh Doan, Jeremy Lauzon, and Justin Sourdif were dealt, Treliving had to deal on the periphery and operate within the confines of a prospect pool that he had drained for two mediocre and flawed players. He eventually settled on Matias Maccelli (a player I actually like a lot!) and Dakota Joshua (a player on whom I'm rather lukewarm) for a third-round pick and a fourth-round pick, respectively.
The "replace Marner by committee" plan didn't work out (Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)
Then there's the Marner affair. The series loss to Florida seemed to confirm that Mitchell Marner was simply finished in the city of Toronto. The now-infamous screen capture of Marner screaming at his teammates without a bead of sweat in his hair went viral on all the wrong circles of the Internet and the anti-Marner vitriol reached a fever pitch. He simply could not deal with the spotlight that he had to face as a local kid who had consistently struggled to replicate his regular-season counting stats in the postseason. Treliving, who we must not forget had tried in an admirably gutsy move during a rare display of cojones to flip Marner to the Carolina Hurricanes for Mikko Rantanen at the trade deadline only to be defied by Marner's no-move clause, seemed to have made up his mind. As is typical with the relentlessly greedy Vegas Golden Knights, they emerged as the prime suitor, but their advances came with one stipulation: Vegas wanted the extra eighth year that can only be signed by a player's incumbent team. Thus, Treliving agreed to engineer a sign-and-trade for Marner's services, netting Nicolas Roy, a player who had always been overqualified in the Knights' 4C slot, essentially for nothing. While I tend to say that Treliving did very well in extracting a valuable player in Roy from the situation, there were rumours that Vegas was also willing to offer Nic Hague in the deal. Whether that was true or not may never be known, but it is obvious that Treliving didn't do all he could to push Vegas on the Marner front, despite having some leverage on his side. I can say with a lot of conviction that I would much rather have Hague playing minutes over Benoit or Philippe Myers on this team. The real tragedy was that Berube clearly had no idea what to do with the underrated skill and offensive touch of Roy, who played most of his career in Toronto with two anchors on the wings and buried in defensive zone starts. Regardless of the Roy factor, Treliving's roster construction failures and his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to ship out a face of the franchise during a division race alienated the Leafs' skilled and homegrown playmaking maestro, leaving the squad with a hole that could not be filled. The coping of angry Leafs fans that Maccelli, Roy, and Joshua would collectively fill the void of a perennial 90-point player is even less comprehensible in hindsight.
And so it was that the most successful Leafs team of my lifetime entered the 2025-26 season in a weakened state, where they never managed to rid themselves of the catatonic hockey that plagued them for the first month of the campaign. While the rest of their rivals, including a Panthers squad missing Sasha Barkov, were battling through the difficulties of an Olympic-year schedule, the Leafs started with a remarkably easy set of games on the calendar. Toronto began with a long homestand littered with non-playoff opponents. But the slump and the bad vibes never dissipated. The ugliness reached an apex after an overtime loss against an uninspiring Seattle Kraken team when Stolarz lashed out at his teammates in the media, admonishing them for their lack of fight and heart. It turns out that Stolarz's prognosis was stunningly accurate. An ugly 2-6-2 stretch in November gave the Leafs a difficult mountain to climb in the standings. Three losses leading up to the Christmas break in which the team was outscored 14-4 caused Treliving to finally make a move: he scapegoated the admittedly poor-performing power play coach Marc Savard rather than taking direct action against Berube, whose dump-and-chase style had been growing stale for several weeks. A brief resurgence in January, spotlighted by an impressive win over the league-best Colorado Avalanche, was instantly wasted by a 1-6-2 stint to wrap up the month. Coming out of the Olympic break, the team lost eight in a row for the first time since the Randy Carlyle days, teeing them up to recoup some assets with some wise selling at the NHL trade deadline. Naturally, expecting wisdom out of the Treliving front office was the wrong move, especially for a regime that had conducted the utter disasterclass of yesteryear.
Fraser Minten seems set to follow in a long line of ex-Leafs to become successful Bruins (Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images)
On March 1, 2025, the Leafs led the Atlantic Division by points percentage and were gearing up for a big playoff run before Marner would likely command a raise when his contract came off the books in the offseason. The fanbase was all-in and held no reserves about dipping deep into the prospect cupboard. The moves started on the minor side, as Connor Dewar and Connor Clifton were acquired by old pal Kyle Dubas and the Pittsburgh Penguins for a fifth-round pick (Dewar has since been a part of one of the league's best shutdown lines along with Blake Lizotte and fellow former Leaf, Noel Acciari). But it was the purchases that truly warrant scrutiny. Looking for a third-line center to bolster the forward depth, Treliving sent a 2027 first and gritty youngster Nikita Grebenkin to the Philadelphia Flyers for Scott Laughton and two mid-round draft picks. Laughton's play-driving metrics has been slipping for several years to that point, yet he was still deemed to be worth a distant first-rounder and an intriguing winger. For most of the season, Laughton was a glorified 4C and didn't solidify Toronto's depth down the middle as well as expected. Even that pales in comparison to the next blunder. It was widely reported that the Leafs were very eager to acquire a top-four right-handed blueliner to pair with Morgan Rielly, Toronto's de facto #1 offensive driver from the back end. Many sources stated that Treliving was enamoured with one of his former players, Calgary's Rasmus Andersson, despite the Flames' insistence that he was only available for an exorbitant price. For several days, it appears that Treliving pushed the Flames on the Andersson matter before finally realizing what should've been a formality from the start: the Leafs did not have the assets to make a serious push for the Swedish defenseman. From there, as the market shifted, Treliving was forced into a panic-induced spiral where he eventually settled on Boston's Brandon Carlo, a player with a completely different profile to Andersson. Carlo, even at the time, was a severely limited puck mover who had largely struggled throughout 2024-25. However, he was a cost-controlled righty with term at a position of need after Treliving had allowed the situation to escalate. The price was immense: Toronto's top prospect in center Fraser Minten, a top-5 protected pick in the 2026 NHL draft, and a 2025 fourth-rounder (used to select Vashek Blanár, an intriguing project D with a lot of size and some puck moving chops). It was immediately clear that Carlo was not the Rielly stabilizer that Treliving had promised. He had evidently lost a step from his peak days as a Bruin and really struggled to push the pace of play. His 2025-26 season has been poor and has emphasized his various limitations as a rearguard. On the other hand, Minten has been a revelation for the Bs. While I think his January heater in which he was named the Rookie of the Month was a bit of an aberration, he seems quite likely to become a valuable middle-six pivot for Boston for the next decade or so. Given the Leafs' unprecedented struggles, the 2026 pick could easily become a top-7 pick for Toronto's bitter rivals. Even if the top-5 protection converts, Toronto would no longer control its 2027 and 2028 1sts (thanks to the Laughton deal with Philly) even as they sit on the precipice of a rebuild and with Matthews' future in the air. Laughton and Carlo have had their moments, but when you deal the functional equivalent of three first-round picks, you expect more than a respectable bottom-six center and a below-average 4D.
So, the context of the Brad Treliving as steward of the deadline experience was understandably traumatic for many fans of the team. Our worst fears came to life with a woefully mismanaged selling process during which Treliving flipped the aforementioned Laughton for a conditional third, the streaky but gifted Bobby McMann for only a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick, and failed to subtract the other unnecessary edges of the team. Getting a first-rounder from Colorado for Nic Roy was tidy business, but it could have been even more assets in the bank if Treliving had sacked Berube going into the Christmas period and brought in a coach who could coach a relatively competent NHL offensive structure to get the best of Roy. Letting Treliving handle one of the most important times of the year seemed to be a ringing endorsement from management of his qualities, but they let him go just a few weeks later, which rightfully brings up questions about whether MLSE should have simply cut the cord earlier and restricted his influence on the direction of the franchise.
MLSE President Keith Pelley made waves this week (Toronto Maple Leafs / YouTube)
That blunder brings me to my final point. The Leafs have cut the head off the snake that is the hockey operations staff, but the underlying problems have not been addressed. Since the appointment of Keith Pelley to the position of president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, skepticism regarding the ownership structure has only continued to bubble. Pelley, despite a veil of false promises, has corporatized the off-ice product to a ridiculous degree even as he commissions mass layoffs of crucial staff, including the director of sports science for the Leafs roster. As he made claims about the passion and earnestness of the Leafs' immense fanbase during his press conference on Tuesday, he continues to flounder behind the scenes in his role and has failed to provide any meaningful strategy to sow the seeds of long-term success. With that being said, I'm inclined to give Pelley the benefit of the doubt, to a certain extent; he isn't a hockey mind in the slightest and he hasn't exactly been surrounded by people who could make his job of managing six professional sports teams simultaneously a bit easier. One of Rogers' most stringent cost-cutting measures was the decision to leave the Maple Leafs and the Raptors without a president of sporting operations when they let go of Brendan Shanahan and Masai Ujiri. Say what you will about the roster construction under Shanahan, the Leafs were postseason contenders in every single season of his tenure. Eliminating the president of operations position allowed Treliving and Raptors GM Bobby Webster to conduct poorly conceived retooling plans without any direct scrutiny from above. Pelley, regardless of his extravagant salary, shouldn't be expected to assess whether Treliving got fleeced in the Bobby McMann trade or not; that's what a president of hockey operations should be doing. With free rein, Treliving was perfectly content to take the "safe" route this season, tinkering along the edges of a rapidly sinking ship and effectively throwing away a year of Cup contention.
Pelley's post-Treliving press conference was littered with sound bites, which Toronto media grabbed with delight. "The verticals weren't horizontally integrated enough," "we didn't see the train coming," and the most unexpected Adam Engström reference of all time (which, to me, seemed like a blatant admission that the Leafs tried to target Engström and the later-referenced Michael Hage in a Matthew Knies trade) were instant classics, but I walked away from the presser with a somewhat optimistic outlook. I take no solace in Pelley admitting his mistakes; that's a classic CEO tactic when you want to win over an audience's good graces again. Maybe try to not make the same mistakes, Keith, before we truly take you seriously. However, the allusions to a data-centric front office should rightfully inspire some hope. Treliving was hired purely on his experience as a GM, rather than his competence. The fact that Treliving was hired just five days after Kyle Dubas got the boot shows that the purported "interview process" was a mere act for the media. Leafs fans were justifiably concerned that this same mode of thinking would lead the Leafs to consider one man, the St. Louis Blues' Doug Armstrong. Armstrong is a perfectly fine general manager, but he should not have the job by default, even if MLSE can pay off the Blues organization for his services given that he has already accepted the president role in St. Louis. Toronto needs to consider some outside-the-box methods, similarly to the decision the Montreal Canadiens took when they chose former player agent, Kent Hughes, for their GM position. There can be no loopholes in this process. As Pelley said, identifying the next leader of the Leafs will be the biggest move he makes as the president and CEO of MLSE.
Mike Gillis would be the complete opposite to Brad Treliving (Darryl Dyck / Canadian Press)
It seemed clear from the message that Pelley is aiming to hire two separate people for the top front office jobs. Rumours from the Leafs beat and the top NHL reporters seems to suggest that the Leafs will target a potentially unconventional outside hire for the president position and then hopefully nab a talented young AGM to fill the general manager void and learn from a more experienced voice. To me, based on all the criteria that Pelley referenced, the runaway favourite at this point seems to be former Vancouver GM Mike Gillis. Gillis is considered to be at the forefront of the statistical revolution in hockey, as he helped the Canucks make the 2011 Stanley Cup final with an organizational focus on the tenets of speed and puck possession, which Toronto desperately needs to rediscover. Gillis is, to an extent, a "non-traditional" hockey mind. He hasn't worked as an NHL GM since 2014, but has remained active in the hockey world through his role as a consultant for the NHL Players' Association and has historically fought back against the "old boys club" mentality that had infected the Treliving-era Leafs. A leaked document with his mission statement for the Pittsburgh Penguins' 2021 general manager role referenced his main principles, like building a style around the star players in place and adapting to trends in play before the league at large comes around. It sounds perfect on paper, but Gillis isn't a seamless fit. Even during the best of times in Vancouver, Gillis was a disruptive nonconformist who could easily draw the ire of those around him with his thought process and manner of communication. That may be an imperfect fit in the pressure cooker of the Toronto hockey market. Gillis is 67 years old, so there's no guarantee that he would even consider a medium-term retool, if that is ownership's preferred direction. I still think Gillis is the current favourite, but it's entirely possible that the eventual top candidate hasn't even thrown their name into the ring yet.
The GM position is slightly less interesting. All signs point to the Leafs targeting a hotly tipped AGM from around the league with a statistical philosophy. Names like Florida's Sunny Mehta and Seattle's Alexandra Mandrycky seem like good fits with this direction. My personal suspicion is that the Leafs might not be fully on board with a total nerd type. A general manager still has to sell the vision for the team to upper management and the fans. If Rogers is skeptical that Mehta (who is currently receiving the most buzz) or anybody else up that alley can do so, I would take them off the list. There's also the wrinkle that many teams with elite assistant general managers still can enact the mechanism of promoting them to the GM chair and moving the current general manager to president to avoid losing a world-class asset. I still wonder if one of the Leafs' current assistant general managers, mainly Darryl Metcalf or Brandon Pridham, would be appropriate candidates for a promotion. They are both numerically-oriented modern hockey brains with familiarity within the organization. Personally, I earmarked a Gillis-Metcalf front office as soon as I heard the first Gillis rumours, but I could be completely off the mark.
The first decision for the new president and general manager will be the status of current coach Craig Berube. If there was an opposite Jack Adams Trophy, Berube would be in contention for his antics this year. It is clear that he has lost the locker room and that his style is not conducive with the Leafs' roster as currently built. However, when Gillis took over in Vancouver, he unexpectedly kept hold of coach Alain Vigneault, a predominantly defensive coach, and managed to turn the Canucks into a high-energy team anyways. Could history be repeating itself? I am of the opinion that the Leafs are going nowhere until Berube is sent to the unemployment centre, but the next president of hockey operations may disagree with this assessment. One way or another, it will be a fascinatingly tumultuous month in Leafs Nation, one that could have been avoided if Brad Treliving had never gotten the big job with the shiny desk.
And so it was that the Toronto Maple Leafs organization wasted the prime years of their talented core players under the reign of Brad Treliving without a clear respite in the near future. As Leafs fans, it increasingly feels like we are under the curse of some satanic entity. In the words of Iceland's finest, The devil collected, with a grin. To those of you that still have a beating heart and care about this team, I salute you and I am with you. If I have one wish beyond my personal life ambitions, it is to see the Toronto Maple Leafs lift a Stanley Cup before I am dead or before the world ends (the latter seems like it could happen first nowadays). I've seen people say that they simply want the Leafs to play with heart and a love for the city. I'll be the first to tell you that is a lie. I could not care less if Auston Matthews nonchalantly wins a Stanley Cup while wearing Boston Bruins-patterned underwear, keeping a picture of Kristi Noem in his pocket, and sporting an I Hate Sincere Sports ball cap during his press conferences. I just want to be there when we lift the chalice and I imagine many of you feel the same way. Let's just hope and pray that the next era isn't as disastrous as the reign of Brad Treliving, a man who left the Leafs in worse shape than when he arrived.
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STATS COURTESY OF NATURAL STAT TRICK
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