Brad Treliving failed to navigate Leafs’ win-now window as the modern game passed him by

In the aftermath of Brendan Shanahan summarily dismissing Kyle Dubas due to a power struggle following the end of the 2022-23 campaign, the Toronto Maple Leafs were still poised to rule the near-future. Shanahan clearly outlined that his next general manager would require previous experience. While that may have provided the old guard with comfort by way of familiarity, it also effectively limited the team’s due diligence. And when Brad Treliving was announced as the team’s next general manager on May 31, 2023, effectively earmarked for the position, he was tasked with improving a supremely talented team that habitually stumbled throughout the postseason.

Fewer than three years later, Treliving was fired by MLSE CEO Keith Pelley. There are some factions that believe Treliving should’ve been dismissed after botching Mitch Marner’s impending free agency, which became a daily talking point, despite the team winning the Atlantic Division. Treliving may speak the coda of the hockey man, but the modern game passed him by. And with his lack of creativity in trades, along with a player-friendly approach to contract negotiations (labeling Treliving as a pro-labour advocate is perhaps forced generosity) compounded by a frightening lack of urgency disguised as caution, Treliving was ill-suited to preside over this Maple Leafs team.

As my colleague Scott Maxwell outlined for Daily Faceoff, Treliving didn’t win a single trade during his tenure. If you want to be pedantic, perhaps Treliving and his acolytes can claim Nicolas Roy for Colorado’s 2027 top-10 protected first-round pick as a small win, only that Roy constituted the return for Mitch Marner, a last-ditch effort to recoup an asset after two years of clumsy negotiation. Treliving was emboldened to go all-in, which was the correct strategy for a Maple Leafs team boasting Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander in their primes, with John Tavares operating as a 35-goal threat and a premier face-off specialist. It’s the application where Treliving fell well short, and may be the primary reason why he’s out of a job this morning.

Treliving wanted to rebuild the Maple Leafs in his own visage, setting the market aflame with buzzwords like ‘snot’ and ‘DNA change’ but it didn’t match the needs of the modern game. He brought in Max Domi, Ryan Reaves, and John Klingberg during his first summer with the team, while extending David Kampf, and the latter three moves were disastrous. Domi has to be stapled to a top-six right wing role in order for the Leafs to survive his minutes and his cap hit is prohibitive to some teams for a potential trade. Kampf was a defensive specialist whose underlying numbers fell off a cliff, and he eventually refused to report to the AHL’s Toronto Marlies this season before the Vancouver Canucks swept in to take him off the Leafs’ hands. Treliving’s decision to trade for Brandon Carlo and Scott Laughton were moves meant to augment a team that didn’t care about the future, but Laughton wasn’t deployed correctly and Carlo never found his form in Toronto.

“There will be change moving forward, that’s just the nature of the business,” Treliving said on May 29, 2025 at his end-of-year press conference. “We have to continue to change and evolve our mindset and create the team, both between the ears, personnel, to be our very best at the most critical moments. There’s some DNA that has to change on our team. If you keep getting to the same result, and that’s not to dismiss a lot of the good that led up to it, if you keep getting the same result, there’s some DNA that needs to change. That’s on me going forward, and our staff.”

The NHL is a copycat league and perhaps therein lies the problem with Treliving: he didn’t understand what made the Florida Panthers back-to-back champions. Rather than understanding Florida wore down opponents due to a hyper-disciplined 1-2-2 forecheck that all four lines understood, Treliving tried to re-design a team designed to thrive in a puck possession game in order to become slower, more truculent, and heavier. It backfired dramatically. And while Craig Berube has performed miserably this year behind the bench, seemingly exasperated and out of ideas on a daily basis, Treliving was fully empowered by Pelley to propel this team over the top. His lack of vision and understanding of what makes successful teams work led to his demise.