The Toronto Maple Leafs rushed the selection process when they were selecting their new GM and it’s coming back to haunt them.
In the NHL, general managers get extremely long ropes, but given their importance to the team’s success, this is stupid. A bad GM will burn you for years, and so identifying a bad one and moving before that can happen is extremely important even if it never, ever happens.
Therefore, the Toronto Maple Leafs should not give Brad Treliving any more time.
He’s had his time, and he’s proven to be extremely bad at his job.
It’s not just the obvious unforced errors, but that the thinking behind them is downright idiotic.
This isn’t working and it isn’t going to work. Someone who ascends to running the Toronto Maple Leafs isn’t going to sit there and say “well I better completely re-evaluate how I think,” and so it’s just easier, and smarter, to fire him.
He isn’t good at running hockey teams and he likely won’t suddenly get good at it.
Don’t believe me? Just google “Calgary Flames.”
The Ristolainen rumour is the last straw.
Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Waste Matthews’ Prime With Treliving in Charge
Rasmus Ristolainen is one of the NHL’s worst players. He’s overrated and teams lose when he’s on the ice. He has never, not even once in his career, finished the season with a positive expected goals rating.
Even worse, his results are just as bad. Ristolainen has never finished the season with his team scoring more than the opposition while he was on the ice.
He isn’t worth a league minimum contract, but because the Leafs, under Treliving, believe unquestioningly that anyone with a popular name is automatically a fit for the team, the Leafs are supposedly interested in him.
That is a fireable offense.
In the summer, the Leafs didn’t do any scouting and they didn’t even consider how players would fit on their team. They completely wasted the entire $20 million they had to spend this summer. With an internet connection and access to naturalstattrick and capfriendly, I was able to correctly predict these were bad moves within five minutes of hearing about them.
I do not work for a professional hockey team!
They failed to land even one star player with the money, and they gave Ryan Reaves a three-year deal, which is something so egregiously stupid it’s impossible to believe it actually happened.
Klingberg was either already injured and they were lazy, or he was healthy and he just sucks. Either way, it’s horribly embarrassing for Treliving and the Leafs as a whole.
This is the team with the most resources.
They spent five seconds searching for a GM (and I think they may even have interviewed Peter Chiarelli, which shows you that Shanahan should also probably be canned) after firing the Alex Anthopoulos of hockey.
That GM made 4 name brand signings, all of which have proven to be terrible for the team. (Bertuzzi, the only one who has been any good, is expensive for a 2nd line winger with 5 goals).
The GM only got five out of a maximum eight years for Matthews and has all but walked superstar William Nylander to free-agency.
He signed two incompatible one-dimensional players that make it all but impossible for his coach to ice a workable lineup.
He entered the season – one of the limited prime years of the best player who will ever play for the Toronto Maple Leafs – with absolutely zero depth on defense, and a blue-line with even less physical presence than Kyle Dubas ever assembled, despite each GMs contrary reputations.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a disaster hidden in plain site by their EXTREMELY LUCKY record that they have no business having. The fact that this team is entertaining thoughts of adding the almost universally agreed upon worst defenseman, with the worst contract, is just bizarre.
Why do we need to waste two years under horrible management before we can get rid of Treliving? He’s clearly proven to be bad, so why draw it out?