Brendan Shanahan is once more leaving Toronto for his ‘second home’.
Darren Dreger of TSN reported late Thursday that the fired Maple Leaf president will be taking a position with the league’s Hockey Operations department, where he worked 2009-14 after his retirement from 21 years as a player. Shanahan and his family have maintained many connections in New York City near the NHL head office where he once played for the Rangers and New Jersey Devils. Dreger said the 56-year-old Shanahan will split time between the New York and Toronto offices and sit in on events such as general managers’ meetings in an advisory capacity.
The league did not immediately respond for comment.
Shanahan was initially working in NHL business development, replacing Colin Campbell as senior vice-president of player safety in June 2011 to help police the game based on his vast experience as both scorer and scrapper. He’s the only player in league history with more than 600 goals and 2,000 penalty minutes. Under Shanahan, videos, often narrated by him, were issued to explain suspensions and rule interpretations to the media and fans.
A local hockey and lacrosse star, the rebuilding Leafs hired the Mimico-born winger to return to the GTA in 2014. His ‘Shanaplan’ blueprint included the hiring of $50 million head coach Mike Babcock to run a team whose losing spiral has a silver lining of generating top-five draft picks.
Bearing fruit as Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander came of age and when John Tavares was signed as a free agent, the Leafs are currently on a league-best nine-year playoff run.
But failure to get beyond the second round up to last season under three coaches and three general managers (including himself in a part-time role early in the process) led to his eventual dismissal. Incoming Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley eliminated the president’s position with the Leafs and Toronto Raptors (Masai Ujiri).
When Shanahan’s Toronto mansion sold for $13.2 million in the summer, it was widely anticipated that he would rejoin the New York office in some function for the short term, but it’s unlikely he’d turn down another executive post with another team, perhaps a future expansion outfit.
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