Leafs Front Office 2026-27

[Guilt Trip]

It is.

Which is why, while obviously I’d have loved the leafs to win, I still enjoyed watching the incredible levels of skill under Dubas/Keefe. I’d rather have watched that than watch them play the way they have the last 2 years even it it had taken them further in the playoffs.

Maybe I’m part of the problem.


(If they’d won it all last year I’d probably have accepted one year of unwatchable hockey )

I'm the same. I've really enjoyed watching these guys for 10 years. Some of the best skill ever to wear a Leafs uni. I've said it many times, my summer's never change whether they win or lose. I enjoy the show both with good endings and bad ones. Last I checked, my name isn't going on the cup, and I'm not getting paid millions to play a game. Hockey is entertainment, nothing more. Doesn't mean I don't want them to win and I like bitching about dumb plays etc but at the end of the day, what do any of us get if they win it all? You get to brag to your friends for a few days about something you had zero part in?
Enjoy the show everyone and breathe deep...this one is almost over and then we can look forward and bitch about the next GM/POHO, UFAs and all that stuff soon enough.

 

[cw]

The main benefit of a search firm is the background check for liabilities they can run without it getting personal.

Pelley described it as the most important decision he will probably make as CEO.
He's probably right on that.
They obviously made an error with Treliving.
I doubt he'll get a 2nd Leafs GM hire any time soon.

According to Pelley, Board approval is required to fire the coach.
So he has to get board approval for this hire.
He has to show due diligence and no stone left unturned to the board. That is hard for him to do on his own.
Some personal background of the GM should not be something among the MLSE employees.
At the same time, they have to be careful of things like tampering.
A search firm helps to insulate them from that.
Some of it is Pelley covering his ass. Some of it is to help develop consensus with broad info gathering to help them make a decision.
A third party search helps to keep it at arm's length and provide the man hours to help collect info and document it for the board.
Pelley has to make a presentation to get them to go along with his decision.

An unusual aspect of this hire is they're not settled on what the management structure will be.
They're using the process to help them sort that out - casting a wider net.
So some consulting is likely involved to assess the various NHL structures along with the available candidates.

At the end of the process, it is hard to imagine them worse off compared with Treliving.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2040053091978932466

 

[cw]

That is not going to help Treliving find another GM position - if his prior two NHL stops were not enough.

I would agree that Steeves never really got a fair/good shot. He did all he could for them in the AHL He needed NHL ice time for the type of player he is - to show his scoring skill.
Any notion about retooling requires a major change in finding 'wallets' that make it to the NHL because their prospect system and picks are so barren. Their desperate void there should help attract candidates as they should know they will get a better shot than with a team with a deep prospect system.

 

[L K]

That is not going to help Treliving find another GM position - if his prior two NHL stops were not enough.

I would agree that Steeves never really got a fair/good shot. He did all he could for them in the AHL He needed NHL ice time for the type of player he is - to show his scoring skill.
Any notion about retooling requires a major change in finding 'wallets' that make it to the NHL because their prospect system and picks are so barren. Their desperate void there should help attract candidates as they should know they will get a better shot than with a team with a deep prospect system.

Its shocking how disconnected the GM and Coach have been though as well. When we do call up guys, Berube buries them with low opportunity minutes and then holds them responsible for not producing. The next coach and GM need to be more sympatico. Performance should ultimately drive opportunity but when you call up a guy being successful as a goal scorer, pairing him with Jarnkrok and Lorentz and then criticizing them for not scoring goals is asinine.

 

[cw]

Its shocking how disconnected the GM and Coach have been though as well. When we do call up guys, Berube buries them with low opportunity minutes and then holds them responsible for not producing. The next coach and GM need to be more sympatico. Performance should ultimately drive opportunity but when you call up a guy being successful as a goal scorer, pairing him with Jarnkrok and Lorentz and then criticizing them for not scoring goals is asinine.

As I've posted before, Quinn adjusted his system to the talent he had to work with. Over the summer, they would adjust the roster and the adjust the system to the new set of players. If they tried to do that, it sure didn't work out this season. Defense went from 8th to 30th in GAA.

They missed Marner on the PP. They missed him defensively. But still, their place in the standings strikes me as significant underachievement from the talent they had to work with. A hunk of that has to be on the coach - who was supposed to help them defensively. I don't mind Berube as a person - seems like a decent enough guy. But he got nowhere close to "more than the sum of the parts" with this group. Makes me wonder if Rielly will come around with a new coach. (I'll probably get pounded for tossing that out there ... but it has been the two years under Berube where Rielly really looked lost out there).

Treliving & Berube are sort of old school. It was an awkward fit on a roster where Dubas had been skill, skill & more skill. I wonder if Pelley sitting in on the trade deadline saw Treliving swashbuckling without data. And then when he couldn't straighten out the team, conclude he was flying by the seat of his pants with little data evidence examined to help them figure out how to correct it. I can't imagine Berube surviving this.