Simmons Says – the usual collection of thoughts, dots and shots

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The question Keith Pelley really needs to answer: Will Brad Treliving be back as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs?

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And if the answer to that question is no, then why is Treliving in charge in the days heading into Friday’s NHL trade deadline?

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This is not an unfair question to ask considering the circumstances. A year ago, believing the Maple Leafs were this close to a Stanley Cup, Pelley fired Brendan Shanahan as president of the Leafs.

He fired him after the Leafs had made the playoffs a record nine years in a row and not advanced much beyond that in the post-season.

Now they’re not heading to the post-season. So what to think of Treliving’s future after his first season working alongside Pelley?

And, tied to Treliving is the future of head coach Craig Berube, who really has next to no future with the Leafs.

But does Treliving? If he knows, he isn’t saying. He’s proceeding to Friday’s NHL trade deadline as though it’s business as usual for the team. He knows what this team is right now. He knows the mistakes that have been made. He has no blind illusions about what’s gone wrong and where this roster is at.

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The hard part now: Fixing them, for whoever is in charge.

Pat Gillick, maybe the greatest general manager in sports history, once told me that the job of a GM includes making mistakes.

“Everyone makes them,” said Gillick. “The key is fixing them. And not waiting on them.”

This is Treliving’s job right now. Until he doesn’t have a job. And there’s been no indication from anyone that he’s about to be shown the door.

Then again, there was little indication that Shanahan was being pushed out, or that Masai Ujiri was being shelved by the Raptors, before Pelley pulled the plug on both of them last year.

Now Pelley, not a hockey man of any history, is suddenly the central figure in everything to do with Leafs hockey. What happens next, after Friday: That’s his call.

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Healthy Tanev would have made a difference

Here’s what I believe: Had Chris Tanev been healthy most of the season and the Leafs had their goaltending tandem in place for the entire schedule, they would be a playoff team. Would they be a contender? Not necessarily. But they’re heading to close to 90 points without Tanev, with Mitch Marner gone, and with so-so goaltending. The year before the Leafs signed Tanev, the Dallas Stars traded for him at the deadline. The Stars went 19-4 in the final 23 games. Tanev was injured in Game 4 of the Western Conference final against Edmonton, with the Stars leading 2-1. After Tanev’s injury, Dallas lost the final three games of the series … Captain Auston Matthews returned to the Leafs after the wild Olympic celebration and the ill-determined White House trip, and he was just about their most effective player in two terrible losses in Florida. Which isn’t saying much. If the other 17 Leafs players were at the White House with him, and at the party the night before, blame Matthews for his lack of leadership. But his teammates were close to bloody awful in games in which they had no excuse to be bloody awful in. That’s not on him … Interesting that after the Leafs loss in Sunrise on Thursday night, waiting just outside the dressing room for Matthews was his Team USA mate, Matthew Tkachuk. The two were both born in 1997, and Tkachuk spent his early years in Arizona, playing hockey in the same rinks as Matthews. Their gold-medal attachment now is forever … Also their age: Gold-medal winner Tage Thompson, from Phoenix. What are the odds of three hockey players from a state with almost no hockey becoming gold-medal winners together on Team USA? … The Buffalo Sabres plan to honour Thompson on Tuesday night at their home game, ironically against Vegas. You know who plays for Vegas? Former Sabres star Jack Eichel. Wonder if the Sabres will do what the Panthers did with Matthews and Tkachuk on Thursday night, have Thompson and Eichel take a ceremonial faceoff together. The fans in Florida loved it. The fans in Buffalo, who don’t love Eichel, may not react similarly … If you have a problem with Claire Hanna, look in the mirror. There’s your problem. You’re staring right at it.

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Bobby McMann likely won’t fetch a first

As a city and a market, Toronto has a way of historically overrating hockey talent. The latest is Bobby McMann, a nice, hard-working kid, a late-bloomer of good speed but limited skills. He is not a front-line player on any team. He is not a $5-million-a-year player, even by today’s inflated NHL standards, He will not bring a first-round pick in a trade unless a general manager panics by Friday. Maybe he’ll be traded. Maybe he’ll be re-signed by the Leafs. That doesn’t change who he is, which is a middle-of-the-roster NHLer who turns 30 in June … I’d like to see the Leafs finish the season with Matthews centring William Nylander and Matthew Knies. Their three best forwards on one line. Boston Bruins style … When Team Sweden won gold in 2006 at the Turin Olympics, Mats Sundin helped charter a plane so that the players could head to Stockholm to celebrate, rather than return to the NHL immediately. The players didn’t miss any games but their Swedish party was apparently legendary. There was no Donald Trump, no social network commentary involved, so all passed without much comment. All these years later, those players are still connected by that gold-medal win and will be forever … The NHL season is about 70% completed. And if I’m voting today, I’d have Islanders rookie Matthew Schaefer on my Hart Trophy, Norris Trophy and Calder Trophy ballots. And that I didn’t expect. I don’t have him close to the top for the Hart or Norris, but still top-five. He should be a runaway winner for rookie of the year. Schaefer is from Hamilton, by the way, same place that brought you Shai Gilgeous-Alexander … My Hart winner today as March begins: Nikita Kucherov of Tampa Bay. My Norris winner: One of Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes or Zach Werenski. The Calder should be a unanimous vote … Not that many years ago, I asked an analytics expert if there was a single statistic to determine who the best defenceman in hockey was? His answer surprised me: Minutes played, he said. The coaches know this stuff better than anyone. As of today, the three leading defencemen in minutes played in the NHL: 1. Hughes; 2. Werenski; 3. Miro Heiskanen of Dallas. Sixth is Makar. That’s a pretty sound group, courtesy of a stats geek … The top Leafs defenceman in minutes played, Jake McCabe is 54th in the league in that category. Morgan Rielly is 70th.

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Blue Jays have it easy to start season

The Blue Jays schedule to start the season is so light they might go something like 22-8 in the first month. It’s that crazy. Aside from three games against the World Series-champion Dodgers — which should be fun in Toronto — the Jays play the A’s, Rockies, White Sox, Twins and Diamondbacks. And they start May with 12 games against the Twins, Rays and Angels. First quarter of the season, they should be close to 30 wins … Max Scherzer is betting on himself with his new Blue Jays contract. If he pitches the 85 innings he pitched last year, he’ll be paid $6 million. If he pitches the 43 innings he pitched the year before in Texas, he’ll earn only the $3 million the Jays signed him for. There’s no loss here for the Jays and probably none for Scherzer … I still worry about their offence without the steady bat of Bo Bichette and the surprising production that came from nowhere a year ago … The three best American basketball players in the NBA are probably Kevin Durant, age 37, LeBron James, 41, and Steph Curry, 37. In other words, old. The three best Canadians in the NBA are Gilgeous-Alexander, 27; Jamal Murray, 29; and Andrew Wiggins, 31 (unless you have RJ Barrett ahead of him.) … The top three Canadians in the NHL are 1. Connor McDavid; 2. Nathan MacKinnon; 3. Makar. The top three Americans in the NHL: 1. Hughes; 2. Connor Hellebuyck; 3. Eichel … Hockey games played that were better than the Olympic gold-medal final: Sorry, I can’t come up with one … The best paying job in sports: Being the owner. When Larry Tanenbaum bought in to the Maple Leafs, the team was worth just more than $175 millon. Now he’s about to cash out — or has cashed out — some 26 years later and the Leafs are worth more than $4 billion … My advice to my money manager: Buy sports franchises … Teams in need of better coaching: 1. Los Angeles Kings; 2. Los Angeles Kings; 3. Los Angeles Kings … It’s entirely possible that Mike Sullivan will have a coached a gold-medal winning hockey team and the worst team in the NHL, all in the very same season.

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Women’s hockey big Olympic winner

After all the foolish noise, the real winner from the Winter Olympics: Women’s hockey. The sport. Not anyone individually. Tickets for PWHL games have skyrocketed in online pricing since the performance of Team USA in Milan. There is now all kinds of talk of PWHL expansion and demand for it. The game in first-year Seattle the other night drew a record crowd of 17,335. Personally, I thought the women’s Olympic tournament was a display of one team’s brilliance. This was just about the worst Team Canada I’ve ever seen, save for the gold-medal game. The rest of the draw was the rest of the draw, as always. But the Americans, man, they took your breath away with their talent … The PWHL, and by extension Mark Walter, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, owns every franchise in the league. They have yet to sell franchises externally. This way of doing business has never been done successfully before in pro sport … Give Troy Ryan credit for getting ahead of the obvious. Instead of waiting to be let go as Team Canada women’s team hockey coach he’s saying that he’s stepping down. Good for him. There’s work to be done coaching with the Toronto Sceptres … If more Canadian women are playing hockey than ever before, shouldn’t we be developing better players? … During the regular season, more people in America watch the WNBA on average than watch the NHL on television. But at the Olympics, the opposite occurs. The gold-medal men’s hockey game had 18.6 million viewers on TV in the U.S. The gold-medal women’s game in basketball at the 2024 Olympics in Paris had 7.8 million viewers … The TV number for the men’s gold-medal final in Canada was surprisingly low, just 8.7 million watching. That’s fewer watching than Games 6 and 7 of the World Series last fall. The gold-medal hockey game did do better on television than the first five games of the World Series in Canada did … Why it’s hard to take the Raptors seriously as contenders, in spite of their impressive record? They’re 11-18 against teams above .500 … Wayne Gretzky talking about Mike Keenan: “He told after a game once that I didn’t have to watch the video. He said I memorized everything that happened during the game, so what was the point? And I told him I only knew one other individual who could do that — and that was you.” Keenan called it the greatest compliment of his career … A question worthy of debate: Should Keenan be in the Hockey Hall of Fame, where coaches tend to be forgotten? … Weird, ESPN has done a deal with the WWE and now it is bringing in big-name wrestlers to talk about other sports on their network and promote their upcoming championship fights, as if they’re not choreographed … A brief view of Brayden Point on Wednesday night: Boy, could Team Canada have used him in Milan. He’s just natural around the net … And condolences and best wishes to Team Canada coach Jon Cooper, who got home after the Olympics to learn of his father’s passing. Can’t imagine the kind of emotional tumult that a hockey loss followed by a deep personal loss would bring … My dad has been gone for 26 years. I still think of him every day … The Pittsburgh Penguins won the other night. Their goal-scorers were Connor Clifton, Blake Lizotte, Egor Chinakhov and Tommy Novak, none of whom could be picked out of a police lineup. How is this Penguins season happening? … Happy birthday to Eric Lindros (53), Ron Francis (63), Ja’Marr Chase (26), Luka Doncic (27) Pat Boutette (74), Adrian Dantley (71), Randy Arozarena (31), Aroldis Chapman (38), Tyreek Hill (32), Ricky Steamboat (73), Ickey Woods (60), Darren Raddysh (30) and Chris Webber (53) … And hey, whatever became of Ben Bishop?

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