When news broke of the Toronto Maple Leafs letting Brendan Shanahan ride off into the sunset, fans knew the end of the Shanaplan was at hand. Shanahan’s departure also meant the end of the Core Four experiment.
Now, we’ve yet to see that situation materialise. Until one or both of Mitch Marner and John Tavares leaves the organisation, the end of the Core Four won’t be official.
MLSE CEO Keith Pelley’s press conference then confirmed something most already intuited. The Leafs weren’t going to replace Shanahan immediately. Instead, GM Brad Treliving would work directly with Pelley regarding all things hockey-related.
When I heard about that situation, my experience in business told me one thing: Treliving is getting an audition for a promotion.
Allow me to digress for just a moment. When companies fire a manager and don’t replace them immediately, the message is that the underlings have a shot at the promotion. The job will go to the hungriest and best-performing employee.
Otherwise, management generally has a replacement in mind before firing an incumbent. Only companies that are forced to pivot without notice (think of a company executive suddenly caught in a scandal) leave a position vacant in order to fill it later on.
Heading back to the Toronto Maple Leafs, that’s the situation at hand. You would think that MLSE would have had some idea of who’d they like to replace Shanahan before letting him go. The organisation preferred to leave the job officially vacant so that Treliving could gradually step in and take over.
Please bear in mind this isn’t about money.
It’s about finding the right person for the job. And, after 11 years of the Shanaplan with very little to show for it, something had to be done. That “something” was letting Shanahan go and keeping the people that management felt were on the right track.
Therefore, as a business major, I would say the Leafs made the right call in letting Treliving stay. Some of the post-Shanahan rumblings are that Shanahan micro-managed quite a few decisions. He insisted that the Core Four remain together, hoping that it would finally work this time around.
While Treliving deserves a ton of credit for trying to build a decent supporting cast by adding around the fringes, it was the team’s top-heavy structure that eventually doomed it.
With the keys to the kingdom, we will see Brad Treliving flex his muscles. That could mean blowing up the Core Four. He owes no loyalties to anyone. So, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Treliving build the team in his vision now that the shackles are off.
Craig Berube to play an “assistant GM” role for Toronto Maple Leafs next season
This past season must have been a frustrating one for Craig Berube at times. While Treliving did a great job of making the team tougher and more resilient, it wasn’t quite what Berube would have envisioned when he accepted the head coaching gig for the Buds.
It seems that now, Keith Pelley’s blessing has given Berube more decision-making power. Again, in business, that’s the sort of thing you want your managers to have. If someone isn’t cutting it, you expect managers to have the courage to let people go.
That is why we can expect a number of significant changes this upcoming offseason. Those “passengers” that Auston Matthews mentioned in his post-game Freudian slip will get the heave-ho.
We won’t need to name names. Just by seeing who goes and who stays, we’ll get plenty of confirmation regarding who those passengers really were.
Matthews did the politically correct thing by pointing the first finger at himself. But if Treliving and Berube feel that their captain was one of those passengers, could that prompt a major change?
In my estimation, Matthews will be the last to go. The organisation has committed too much to Matthews from a marketing and branding perspective to chuck him just like that. But after Matthews, everyone is fair game.
One last thing.
Treliving’s biggest decision will be to re-sign Matthew Knies this summer. Now that Treliving is seemingly free to do as he sees fit, we could see negotiations pick up. Knies should be atop the to-do list well before John Tavares or Mitch Marner.
After Knies has been inked, then we could see a deal come for Tavares. As for Marner, my spider senses tell me he’ll get one last offer from the Leafs and that will be that.
If the summer free-agent market plays out the way I think it will, Marner will remain unsigned well into August. By then, Leafs fans could get some surprising news.