Kudos to the Toronto Maple Leafs for finally firing Brad Treliving, but the timing of this decision is so interesting.
There's nothing quite like a news dump on a Monday night at 8:45 p.m., eh? What's even stranger about the decision was that the team was about to play the Anaheim Ducks later that evening for the first time since Radko Gudas had injured Auston Matthews.
With eight games left in the season, keeping Treliving wouldn't have changed anything because there's really nothing he can do from now until April 15. He still has two call-up's available to him so he could have brought up Dennis Hlideby or another Marlies prospect, but that's all he could really do, so it's obviously an interesting time to let him go.
However, maybe that's the reason they let him go now instead of waiting 15 days because the last time they fired a general manager, they didn't allow themselves much time to hire a new one.
On May 23, 2023, the Leafs fired Kyle Dubas as general manager, which only gave the team less than one month to find a new general manager before the NHL Entry Draft and free agency. Typically, all the team's scouting would have been finalized by then so the rest of the executives would have known who they wanted to pick, but that's a terrible position to be in for any new general manager, especially when you could argue it was the biggest offseason in team history.
Nylander and Matthews had contract extensions they could start negotiating on July 1, 2023 while Marner stil could be traded by then before his no-trade kicked in. The history of the franchise could have changed drastically but instead they brought in a manager who hadn't had much success across the NHL to begin with and was never going to trade Marner on his first day.
GM firing comes at a strange time, but good time
Not only that, but he clearly had zero autonomy for his first two seasons as it felt like President Brendan Shanahan called all the shots, and when Shanahan ultimately got fired and it was time for Treliving to make the decisions, he failed miserably.
By firing Treliving before the regular season, it's clear that the team has someone in mind for the job immediately or they would have waited another few weeks. The name that's most likely to be interviewed immediately is Doug Armstrong, who will be stepping away from the St. Louis Blues after this season.
Armstrong had a succesion plan in place for Alex Steen to take over, so the Leafs may want to bring in a Stanley Cup winning GM. This candidate is tricky because it may mean that Craig Berube stays on as coach as those two previously worked together and were succesful with the Blues.
If it's not Armstrong, the organization may feel like they have the perfect candidate in-house and they want him to get to work immediately, with Brandon Pridham. The 52-year-old has been with the team for 12 years and has been a wizard with the salary-cap, so his views may be valued and he could be rewarded as the next GM of the Leafs.
Either way, the timing of this firing is strange, but thankfully it happened. The Treliving experiment was terrible and the past season has been the worst year in over a decade.