TSN Hockey Insider Chris Johnston joins Gino Reda to discuss the takeaways from Brad Treliving’s address to the media on Tuesday, including theMaple Leafsgeneral manager taking responsibility for the slow start, his open criticism of the players, his thoughts onhead coachCraig Berube and more.
Gino Reda: Brad Treliving just held a state of the union and he was brutally honest. Almost a quarter of the way into the season and the Leafs are tied for last in the conference. The players have been inconsistent; they haven’t had the right work ethic in order to win.We’ll break it all down in a minute, but first off, Chris Johnston you were in the room when he was speaking. What did you think of Treliving falling on his sword right out of the gate?
Chris Johnston: Yeah, before even he had a chance to answer a question, he mentioned that the team isn’t where they envision themselves being and said that“responsibility lies with me. I’m the one who made the personnel decisions made, you know, built this roster. I’m responsible for it.”
I think that that’s set the right tone, quite frankly. There’s lots of blame to go around right now with where the Leafs are at and, in a moment like this, I mean, he knew that there was going to be questions about his coach, about some of his players, about who’s getting traded and all those things. He wanted to come right out and, I think, establish the fact that, as the GM of the of the club, that that he bears responsibility ultimately for where they sit today.
Reda: Right. Let’s talk about where the blame lands then. Treliving didn’t say anything about the players this morning that I’m sure he hasn’t already said to the players directly themselves. We all know the players would have been watching this morning as well. Why do you think it was so important for Treliving to put his thoughts on the players out there so publicly?
Johnston: Well, look, he does do these sort of check-ins periodically throughout the season, kind of quarterly is the expectation, but this has been a quarter unlike any other during his tenure as a GM, just in terms of where the Leafs sit. And so I think that he’s quite a forthcoming guy and really he’s sitting here saying, ‘I can’t trade my way out of this, that that any way for the Leafs to salvage a season, to move forward from where they are at the bottom of the standings has to begin and end with the players and the team within the room. So, I think that that was important.
He also said it’s been too vanilla. And that’s a pretty scathing sentence when you think about it, for a team that that started the year talking about having Stanley Cup aspirations to them not have any identity at this point in time.
I mean, if there’s one thing that the Leafs established last year in their first season under Craig Berube, their head coach, is they played this a certain grinding style of way. They were one of the stingiest teams in terms of giving up goals in the league last season. That hasn’t been the case at all this year. And so, I think that that Treliving basically called it as it is, didn’t sugarcoat anything, didn’t try to make any excuses, in fact said, if anything, they’ve probably won a few more games than they deserved based on the way they played.
Reda: What do you think of his comments of calling out the players, saying that the issue here is lack of consistency based on lack of work effort. Is (pointing out) that lack of work ethic and the effort, is that not a scathing comment when you’re basically saying the players have got what they need, they’re just not working hard enough?
Johnston: Yeah, absolutely. And look, he was pointing to last season as well. He was saying a lot of the same players are still with the Leafs, that were part of last year’s group. They know what it takes. You know, he mentioned that yes, there were times late last season they gave up more, you know, more shots than they were producing themselves. But he felt like those shots were largely contained in the outside of the rink. They weren’t high danger type of chances that we’ve seen this year, he said. Basically, they know what to do, they know what the system is and they’re not doing it consistently enough.
He also said that he could count on one hand the number of complete efforts they’ve had this year. Well, I’ve got five fingers and that would mean five games or less, the GM is saying and tonight is game 20, right? This is the 20th game of the season the Leafs will play on Tuesday night against the Saint Louis Blues. So, when you’re talking about having a complete game, one out of every four, give or take, to start the year, clearly that helps explain at least in the GM’s eyes, why they sit where they are. And he is putting it on the players. In a salary cap world, we just don’t see trades really happening anywhere right now. And it is a fact of life that the Leafs are locked into a lot of the players on this roster at this point in time and if they’re going to get out of it, and they still believe they can, it’s got to start now and it’s got to start with the guys that have been part of the losing early in this season.
Reda: The one guy he didn’t slamat allwas his coach. There’s been a lot of talk about Berube’s structure– maybe the problem is either he needs to change his or approach or they need to make a coaching change, but Treliving was not gonna have any of that, CJ.
Johnston: Absolutely not. I mean, two direct votes of confidence by my count that the GM gave to Craig Berube, saying that he has complete faith in him right now at this point in time.
We live very much in a world where coaches often take the fall for teams because maybe there’s less other ways that a GM could change the roster easily or quickly when things are going the wrong way. But Craig Berube also coached this team to the best record in the Atlantic Division last year. He coached them toGame 7 of the second round, which is the farthest this group has gone in all the years since Auston Matthews, William Nylander and the likes have been a part of this team.
Obviously it does become a talking point, the Leafs have lost last five games in right now to put themselves where they’re at. So it’s a focal point for the media and for the fans. But you know, it was pretty unequivocal from the GM seat that coaching hasn’t been the issue to this point in the season.
Reda: I’m looking over your shoulder and I think that’s the Saint Louis Blues now skating in the game day skate that the Leafs get tonight. Amongst the other teams in the NHL who have vastly underachieved, the Blues fit into that category. You’ve been around this room all year long. How critical is a win over the Blues tonight or it sends a horrible message on the heels of what Treliving just said this morning.
Johnston: Yeah, it’s critical on a number of levels and when we’re at mid November and you start getting into sort of talk about is this a must win game, I mean that that speaks volumes about where a team like the Leafs are at. And you’re right, it is the Blues behind me and where the Blues are at, in fact. Toronto’s in a tough spot here. The one thing we should mention, Brad Treliving didn’t have a lot of tangible updates on the number of injured players that the team has, but he did say that’s no excuse for where they’re at, every team has injuries. The Leafs go into a game like this one, down Chris Tanev, down Auston Matthews, Scott Laughton, Anthony Stolarz… I mean key members of this team – Brandon Carlo out as well – are not available for this game, so it’s a tough one to put that much expectation on. But where the Leafs are at, I mean, they just don’t have time to be patient and clearly there isn’t much patience within the the structure of the organization itself. So yes, they need to start winning and fast because it’s very difficult to come back if you dig too big a hole. We’ve seen it historically, very few teams, if they get to the US Thanksgiving holiday not in a playoff spot, ever end up making the playoffs in that season. And so that’s kind of the direct task in front of the players playing tonight.
Reda: Something else to keep in mind, 13 of the Leafs’ first 19 games have come at home so far, but six of their next eight are going to be on the road. That’s the early IT. The full Insider Trading with CJ, Darren Dreger and Pierre LeBrun coming up on the early edition of SportsCentre.