Brad Treliving, Jason Spezza To Manage Team Canada At 2026 World Championships

Hockey Canada has announced the management team for the 2026 World Championships. The group will be led by Brad Treliving and Jason Spezza. Treliving was recently ousted from his role as the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager while Spezza serves as an assistant GM for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The duo will be supported by Penguins GM Kyle Dubas and Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s senior vice-president of hockey operations. Dubas served as the GM of Canada’s 2025 World Championship squad, with support from Salmond.

This news will most notably represent another step up in Spezza’s managerial career. He is a veteran of 19 seasons and 1,248 games in the NHL. His career concluded with three seasons under Dubas’ management with the Toronto Maple Leafs, after Dubas signed Spezza to a one-year contract in 2019. Spezza retired in 2022 and joined Toronto as a special assistant to the GM on the same day. Dubas was let go from his role with Toronto one year later and brought Spezza with him through a move to Pittsburgh. Now, Dubas will hand off international, managerial duties to his protege after leading Canada to a quarterfinal loss at the 2025 World Championship.

Spezza will be supported by Treliving, who brings 11 years of NHL GM experience to the tournament. Treliving last supported the World Championships in 2016, when he served as a co-GM alongside George McPhee. Canada took home the Gold Medal that year, completing back-to-back championship wins thanks to a strong tournament from forward Derick Brassard. Treliving also supported the World Championships as an assistant GM in 2014, the summer before his first promotion to an NHL GM chair.

Together, the experienced Team Canada managerial group will be tasked with putting together a strong roster in a year where many World Championship stars will be in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Canada will likely not be able to bring Sidney Crosby, Travis Konecny, Tyson Foerster, or Noah Dobson to the start of this year’s tournament. They will have access to budding stars Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard, and Matthew Schaefer – though how ready the trio will be for even more games is yet to be seen. Canada could also bring John Tavares, Bo Horvat, Ryan O’Reilly, Brandon Montour, and Jordan Binnington back for another tournament. Horvat and Binnington joined Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics, alongside Tom Wilson and Sam Reinhart – who also sit outside of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The roster could boast a lot of NHL talent, though without as much World Championship experience, under their new management this summer.