There are a lot of people polishing their resumes right now down at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment headquarters.<\/p>\n
Some of them are doing so because they\u2019re about to be out of a job, as GM Brad Treliving will not be the only one fired this spring. Others simply want out of the gong show that has become the Toronto Maple Leafs\u2019 front office.<\/p>\n
As bad as the Leafs have been on the ice this season, cratering to the bottom of the NHL standings the past two months, it\u2019s somehow been worse behind the scenes. The richest team in the league has now become its most small-minded and timid, afraid to do anything approaching creativity or boldness. They\u2019ve become completely paralyzed not only by their failures on the ice but also by the dysfunction that\u2019s settled in the past three years, which is why they\u2019ve done absolutely nothing to address their issues all season.<\/p>\n
On the day yet another Leafs executive was shown the door, if you want to try to explain the inexplicable \u2014 the whys that don\u2019t seem to have any reasonable answers with this team \u2014 you can start right at the top of the organization.<\/p>\n
Why did the Leafs enter the 2022-23 season with a lame-duck GM who was feuding with the president, including not even sitting in the same room with one another at games, only to have that blow up spectacularly at an end-of-season press conference?<\/p>\n
Why did they then hire Treliving, a GM with a terrible track record<\/a> with the perennially struggling Calgary Flames, to take over after a brief, unthorough search?<\/p>\n Why did they then enter the 2024-25 season with a lame-duck president who scrambled to save his job, refusing to trade a star player in Mitch Marner who was set to walk for nothing and pushing for rushed, lopsided trades<\/a> that now look like some of the worst in franchise history? (Which is hard to pull off in Toronto<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Why did they then not replace that president, and allow the weak GM hired under duress to steer the ship by his lonesome this season, effectively shutting the remaining contention window of a team that had 108 points last season?<\/p>\n With the season already lost, why wasn\u2019t that weak GM removed in advance of a pivotal trade deadline at which the organization needed to pull some value out of this failed campaign? Why didn\u2019t they put someone in charge who could start to pull things apart and tank properly when it became clear a bottom-five finish would be the only thing worth playing for with 35 games to go?<\/p>\n On and on and on it goes.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, you can blame Treliving for the poor moves he made as GM for why Toronto is where it is, and you would be right. He did, in fact, make terrible decisions and shed talent again and again.<\/p>\n You could also blame coach Craig Berube, who somehow still remains behind the bench \u2014 in yet another act of bizarre indecision<\/a> \u2014 for the fact this is arguably the worst defensive team in hockey, and you would also be right. And you could blame former team president Brendan Shanahan for presiding over all of it when things began to really turn sideways three years ago, and get a big green check.<\/p>\n But at some point, when the unforced errors happen again and again like this, you need to direct all of those questions higher up the food chain. How on earth has ownership allowed this once-promising front office and roster \u2014 a team that had the third-best regular-season record<\/a> in the league and made the postseason every year in a nine-year period between 2016-17 and 2024-25 \u2014 to get turned into dust over the past two years, never once getting a key decision right?<\/p>\n Part of the answer is that the Leafs ownership situation has been in flux, with the three-headed monster that was Canada\u2019s two telecoms and Larry Tanenbaum being broken apart as Rogers Communications prepared to take over sole custody<\/a> of the franchise. MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley \u2014 a media executive whose most recent experience was running the PGA European Tour \u2014 has been the face of that group for two years now and will oversee the search for Treliving\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a hire so important that it will determine whether the Leafs return to the laughingstock status they flirted with for the first 10 years of the salary cap era or start to turn things around.<\/p>\n