“It certainly brings in a quality piece that they otherwise may not have had, considering they have two first-round draft picks owned by other teams; that kind of selection doesn’t come easily. If he turns out to be a great player, then fantastic for that,” Simmons said. “The sport is all about having options, and right now the Maple Leafs don’t know what Auston Matthews’ situation is, and you don’t know what the future is for the club. Suddenly, you have a player that you can add into your top six forwards, and you probably have a different-looking lineup immediately. You now have the ability to think about trading Auston Matthews or William Nylander to get four or five pieces to go along with Gavin McKenna or whatever player you choose. You can do an entire rebuild here if you want to.”
“I don’t think Mats would have left Sweden, brought his family, and taken the job without having some sort of specific goals or a specific role in mind. He’s not the boss, which I was a bit surprised by because I thought he might be,” Simmons said. “I suspect if John Chayka is smart, and we know he is, that he will take advantage of Mats Sundin’s hockey acumen, his ability to deal with people, and his ability to do some of the things that John isn’t particularly good at himself. This is a nice counterbalance for the Maple Leafs.”
“John Chayka is a numbers and stats guy, that’s his background. Analytics is his background, and that’s what Pelley wanted for this role, someone who was very technical in that approach. If you look at the Maple Leafs statistics from last season, they were near the bottom of the NHL in almost every important category. They were the worst in offensive zone time, defensive zone, like you can go through a bunch of things, and there’s not anything you can point to besides penalty kill, that was the Maple Leafs’ strengths last season. So, to me, you fire him because he doesn’t fit anything that Chayka believes in,” Simmons said.
“Now here’s the problem, he does make $3 million a year, for the next two years, so to fire him costs MLSE $6 million. This is where sport and business intersect: do you fire the coach because you need to replace him because you want someone better, or do you not fire him because you don’t want to pay him $6 million for a guy not working for you?”
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