Toronto Maple Leafs: Ranking All 32 NHL General Managers
By Jeff Borsuk
The 21st Ranked GM – Brad Treliving (Calgary Flames)
The Calgary Flames have trusted their current GM, Brad Treliving, to do the job for the past seven years. He is just their eighth general manager in franchise history. In that time, Treliving’s Flames have won nearly an equal amount of games that they’ve lost. This past season, Treliving was certainly disappointed that his group didn’t qualify for the postseason.
The Good – Treliving has always been good at finding the right players in the draft. There is no better example than who the Flames plucked out of the third round of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. With the 66th overall pick, they took this year’s Norris Trophy winner, Adam Fox.
The Bad – After drafting for Fox’s rights, the team could only watch the defenseman play for Harvard University because he refused to sign with Calgary. Treliving decided to trade Fox Instead of losing him for nothing. It’s hard to hold this against Treliving but he did have a stud defenseman that he was unable to get into a Flames uniform.
If you’re willing to give Treliving a pass on Fox, we can point to some of his head scratching signings. Chief among them would be the four-year contract that he gave to winger Troy Brouwer in 2016. Brouwer was given $18M with a $4.5M AAV. Treliving wasn’t able to move that contract so he was forced to buy out Brouwer. How much was he worth? Well, following the buy out Brouwer signed with the Florida Panthers for $850,000.
The Ugly – Treliving really wanted to acquire Travis Hamonic and he was willing to mortgage the future for D-man. The Flames sent the Islanders a first and a second-round pick in the 2018 draft. They also gave them a second-round draft pick in 2019.
As ugly as that looks, it could have been worse if the Islanders had made better selections. They used the 2018 picks to get defenseman Noah Dobson and center Ruslan Iskhakov. In 2019, they drafted defenseman Samuel Bolduc.