The Toronto Maple Leafs are a team in transition -- going from having a core of star players to now have two of those stars still in their prime, one more in the twilight years of his career, and the other left in cowardice. With that, general manager Brad Treliving is trying to figure out what path is best for the present and future of his hockey club.
And Treliving was able to share exactly how he is going to approach his management this upcoming 2025-26 season and beyond.
In an interview with The Athletic's Pierre Lebrun, Treliving stated that he is still looking to improve the Leafs' roster and how he might go about that.
"I would say this -- the manager’s job is to look after both today and tomorrow. Historically, a lot of pending free agents, even 10 months out, end up getting deals done. You’ve got to manage not just for right now or for next summer, but always with the bigger picture in mind," said Treliving. "We’re trying to put the best possible team on the ice for 2025–26, but it has to make sense. That’s the job, and it doesn’t change from year to year. It’s always about the best use of your funds -- whether that’s today, six months from now, or beyond.
"Our focus right now is simple: if there’s a way to make the team better -- whether that’s today, a month from now, or three months from now -- we’d like to do that.”
The biggest takeaway from that snippet of the interview has to be the part of it making sense for the Leafs. Sure, with the financial backing of a small country and an increasing salary cap, Toronto could throw a lot of dollars at its problems, hoping they can go away. But, it has to make sense. Betting on players like Matias Maccelli and Nic Roy to play increased roles and thinking that they were underutilized on their former teams, go right with that mindset.
No successful teams in this league can just make bad mistake after bad mistake and get away with it. Teams like the Florida Panthers have been just led by the management group that made the fewest mistakes along the way. And Treliving certainly understands that, so with a quasi cautious approach to each move and spending the dollars correctly -- it all makes sense.
Even small details like getting John Tavares and Matthew Knies to sign reasonable deals that still gave the Leafs room to add maybe a somewhat overpaid player like Dakota Joshua for almost nothing in return, is an example of this. Winning some negotiations so you can then take a slight hit elsewhere with the motiviation to improve the roster.
Something tells me that we're going to see some mid-season additions and improvements, as well.