It’s Time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Clean House and Fire Everyone

The Toronto Maple Leafs – for a brief time – did things differently than other NHL teams.

Specifically, the Toronto Maple Leafs hired a young person as their GM, and bucked tradition at every turn as they attempted to be an innovative franchise for the new millennium.

In a sport stuck perpetually in the past, it was a breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately, when you try to innovate at the NHL level, the vultures are circling from day one, and, as Kyle Dubas proved, if you don’t get lucky and win early, they will eat you alive the second you fail. 

It’s Time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Clean House and Fire Everyone

Which is ironic, considering that in the NHL, you are allowed to be extremely bad at your job, as long as you do it in a way indistinguishable from everyone else.

For instance, Ken Holland has been the worst GM in the NHL for at least a decade, but nobody cares.

Peter Chiarelli will get an interview for every GM job that comes up from here to eternity, and just when you think you’ve seen the last of Mike Babcock, he’ll pop up again like a character killed five times already on your favorite soap opera.

To the surprise of no one, when the Toronto Maple Leafs decided to stick with Shanahan instead of giving full control to Dubas, Shanny elected to hire a stooge who wouldn’t usurp him.

Enter Brad Treliving, the result of the shortest GM search in NHL history. 

Hired because he will never, ever, threaten to take Brendan Shanahan’s job.

It’s amazing, frankly, that anyone would hire him to run a Walmart.  Let alone the Toronto Maple Leafs.

How in the hell do you decide that the guy who gave Darryl Sutter a 54th chance, who traded Matthew Tkachuk, who overpaid Nazem Kadri after an obvious anomaly, who signed Jonathan Huberdeau to the world’s dumbest sports contract, is the guy to run your franchise?

Literally every single move he made this summer was a mistake, and anyone with an internet connection and a rudimentary knowledge of how to navigate Naturalstattrick.com and Capfriendly.com could have told you so at the time.

I know because I did. 

The Toronto Maple Leafs are currently 18th in the NHL by points percentage, and they have 2 x multi-goal comebacks, and 3 x games where their goalie stole points (two wins and an OT loss).  Their record is actually pretty lucky.

The Calgary Flames are 30th.

Brad Treliving needs to be removed from the Toronto Maple Leafs before he does any more damage.   But also, Brendan Shanahan and the entire front office need to go as well. 

The Toronto Maple Leafs can’t afford to wait.  This isn’t going to get better and you can’t waste a prime season of the two best players your franchise has ever had.