Leafs Front Office 2026-27

[herman]

I know I've said that we shouldn't put a significant amount of stock in the early names being thrown around, but I do think we're headed toward a Gillis+Mehta hiring. Or at least one of them.

That's what I want, but I am setting my expectations to very neutral because this team has hurt me so much already for most of my life lol

How do we feel about Gillis? He hasn't been around for a loooong time.

If you read his now slightly dated, and never fully implemented plan for the Presidency of the Penguins hockey ops, you should be able to see basically a much more seasoned Kyle Dubas, to the point where I'm wondering how much of what Dubas tried to build was cribbed from Laurence Gilman/Mike Gillis. His self-imposed Sabbatical from any other stops in the interim were due to level of autonomy, and one could easily argue that being away from the game isn't as much of an issue at the President level. Fair point if it was about the GM level though.

Here's what Gillis has been up to since he was punted from the Canucks:

Mike Gillis to the Toronto Maple Leafs? Never say never

The ex-Vancouver Canucks GM has been linked to the Toronto Maple Leafs. He'd be a perfect hire for an organization that's always under pressure.

theprovince.com

He spent time at the NHLPA, at one point looking like he’d be Donald Fehr’s successor until the players chose to go with the politics-focused Marty Walsh.

So while he hasn’t landed in a conventional hockey position, he’s still kept busy. He’s gone around the world, literally, seeking out new ideas from just about any sport. He travelled to Australia to learn about the physical challenges of Australian rules football and how teams and athletes get through games that see the best players run 17.5 kilometres, sometimes in scorching heat. He went to New Zealand to learn about how the All Blacks rugby team are world-leaders in building team culture. He went to Spain to learn about Barcelona’s famed soccer academy. He went to Switzerland to learn about the work the Biotech Institute has been doing in things like cognitive science. He met with business school professors to learn more about organizational behaviour.

 

[herman]

Ways of Building: More layers than a cake

Let's do pyramid power again.

www.pensionplanpuppets.com

I think Brad Treliving's biggest failure was in setting an identity and culture as a concept in his mind, getting a lot of players who could do the identity actions that would entail, along with some who were odd fits, but then getting a coach who understood the goal, understood the ideology of how they were supposed to get to the "score a goal, one more than them" point, but could not actually produce a process and a set of procedures at ice level that would take anyone there.

Emphasis mine; basically this is why the players underperformed.