There’s nothing in Brad Treliving’s career that points to him being the guy to fix the Maple Leafs
Looking at the deadline through an objective lens rather than the lens of someone who wanted to see a disappointing Maple Leafs team blown up, the Maple Leafs GM can hang his hat on the fact that other sellers like the Rangers, Canucks, and Panthers had even more underwhelming outings. Of course, two of those teams own their lottery picks and the other has won the last two Stanley Cups so the need to make the most of the deadline wasn’t there for them like the Leafs either. Brad Treliving giving up a lottery pick to the Bruins along with Fraser Minten for Brandon Carlo of all people is going to be a stench that hangs over this organization right up to the draft and while you can’t put that on Brandon Carlo, it is absolutely something you put on Brad Treliving.
The other ghost of the 2025 trade deadline that will haunt Treliving is only getting a third round pick back for Scott Laughton after sending out a 1st and Nikita Grebenkin for him last year. Laughton and Carlo are two prime examples of Treliving not being able to identify the right players for the Maple Leafs. You can certainly add Max Domi, Dakota Joshua, Nicolas Roy, and Matias Maccelli to the list of Brad Treliving misses, while Oliver Ekman-Larsson (disastrous first season), Anthony Stolarz (inability to handle 50% of the tandem role), and Chris Tanev (the injury situation many predicted) have been a mixed bag albeit with more frequent high end outputs.
That’s a pretty grim way of portraying Treliving’s time as General Manager and ignores some success stories like the Knies and Tavares contracts. The reality is that Treliving inherited a roster of a team that hit 111 points before his arrival and made it to the second round of the playoffs. He followed that up with a 102 point season and being done in the first round, then a 108 point season and a second round playoff exit and now the end results of season three, which aren’t known but certainly don’t involve the playoffs. At best, Treliving was able to come close to maintaining the Leafs success but has never built upon it. And it’s notable that this was his year untethered from the guidance of Brendan Shanahan. While Shanahan often received blame for not taking steps to move the team forward, Treliving has demonstrated that things could have been worse.
Treliving’s time in Calgary doesn’t offer much hope that he’s the guy to figure things out in Toronto either. His tenure in Calgary involved success similar to what he walked into in Toronto and the results achieved in his first couple of seasons, but like what the Maple Leafs are experiencing this year, there were a series of overcorrections which involved missed playoffs and returns to first or second round playoff exits. The exits of Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau mirror what the Leafs have started to experience with Mitch Marner walking to free agency, and while the Flames enjoyed some quality draft picks and a younger core that was developing and thus helping Treliving right the ship, the Leafs don’t have that luxury in part due to giving up assets for Laughton and Carlo.
Treliving and coaching is another challenge that needs to be reviewed. Berube isn’t a fit for the Leafs and arguably never was the right choice. He was an overcorrection of a possession driven approach to a safer dump and chase approach that certainly didn’t mirror with the abilities of the roster’s core. Berube’s one off Stanley Cup was reminiscent of Randy Carlyle’s Stanley Cup success, and while Brad Treliving didn’t have to live through that experiment in Toronto, there was a large portion of Leafs fans who recalled seeing that movie and not liking how it ended.
Treliving’s decision to bring back Darryl Sutter in Calgary had similar results in Calgary. It was okay for a brief period but ultimately went south after a couple of seasons of boring hockey that drove the Flames top talent out the door.
The Maple Leafs initial decision to bring in Brad Treliving was a safe one. Of the established NHL General Managers available, he was arguably the safest choice. He was initially embraced largely for not being Peter Chiarelli and not being a continuation of Kyle Dubas’ philosophy, something that might have held back some interesting internal candidates. The notion that Dubas was the barrier to success was debunked, even if that still doesn’t make you a fan of what Dubas was doing. Perhaps the Maple Leafs will go back to looking at dare to be great candidates rather than banking on GM experience being the be-all-end-all.
There are two years left on Auston Matthews’ contract, William Nylander will be thirty when the next season starts, and two key core players in John Tavares and Chris Tanev are already over 35. Time is of the essence and whether the goal is to still try to win now (and embrace a GM committed to getting a lot done fast) or tearing it all down (the architect of what the next iteration of the Leafs will look like), it seems like the candidate needs to bring more to the table than Brad Treliving can offer.
The Maple Leafs might not be ready to end Brad Treliving’s time in Toronto immediately, but what they need to look at is finding a President of Hockey Operations who has a clear plan for the Maple Leafs and that person needs to determine whether Brad Treliving is who they are comfortable with executing their vision.