The dust isn’t even close to settling on the Brad Treliving firing on Monday night. The news has reverberated around Leafs Nation and the NHL at large.
While the move was hardly a surprise, the timing was. The expectation was that the organization would can Treliving at the end of the season. But doing it now would appear to be jumping the gun.
But then again, the move was long overdue.
Let’s rewind. When the Leafs fired assistant coach Marc Savard last December, the thought process was that more changes would ensue. That didn’t happen. In fact, Treliving doubled down on his support for Craig Berube.
And the organization paid Treliving in kind by backing him up.
That situation, ladies and gentlemen, proved to be a costly mistake. In particular, the faux pas was magnified during the 2026 NHL trade deadline. Treliving’s inability to steward the best possible outcomes for the organization led to a second-straight bungling of the club’s top assets.
One poignant example was the Scott Laughton trade to the LA Kings. The Leafs recouped a pair of mid-round draft picks. That return paled in comparison to the gross overpayment last season, when Treliving jettisoned a solid prospect and a first-round pick in exchange for Laughton.
That situation is but an example of just how badly Treliving handled business. He succumbed to the worst type of pressure a GM can: The pressure to make a deal for the sake of making one.
All of this context paints a clear picture. The organization waited too long to fire Treliving. If anything, the club should have moved on in a similar timeline to the one the Buffalo Sabres followed. The Sabres fired Kevyn Adams early in the season. When current GM Jarmo Kekalainen took over, the team had plenty of runway to turn things around. And boy did they ever.
Still, there’s a silver lining in all of this. Firing Treliving now gives the next GM some time to figure out what to do ahead of the 2026 NHL Draft and free agency. This move resembles what the New York Islanders did last season when they moved on from Lou Lamoriello.
The hope now will be that the Maple Leafs’ next GM will uncover opportunities that Treliving missed. While it might be too much to hope for radical changes, the situation here will be for the Treliving’s successor to find an identity moving forward.
Ultimately, firing Brad Treliving came a little too late. But there might still be a chance to undo much of the damage caused over the last two trade deadlines.