Maple Leafs add Steve Sullivan as assistant coach

The Toronto Maple Leafs hired Steve Sullivan as an assistant coach, the team announced Friday. Sullivan joins the Maple Leafs from the AHL’s Toronto Marlies.

Toronto fired assistant coach Marc Savard on December 22. Savard was responsible for the Maple Leafs’ power play, which converted at a league-worst 13 percent rate under his supervision. There were no plans to make external hires to replace Savard, and Sullivan is a clever in-house candidate, who played 1,011 games in the NHL, including parts of four seasons with the Maple Leafs.

Sullivan was hired by the Marlies in August 2024 as an assistant coach. He previously spent time with the-then Arizona Coyotes organization, and briefly spent time as the team’s assistant general manager, before being dismissed in February 2021.

Craig Berube, Derek Lalonde and the rest of the Maple Leafs’ staff will oversee the power play by committee and Sullivan will almost certainly have input, as the team looks to turn their season around. Berube took responsibility for Savard’s firing, while Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving provided his head coach with another vote of confidence, prior to a December 23 game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“We’ve got to continue to make our team better,” Treliving said. “We’ve got areas that we’ve got to get better in. It’s not lost on us where the team’s at. We live it every day. But I think we’ve got a real good coach. And that’s not to say we don’t change some things, tweak some things. We’ve done that over the course of the last couple of weeks.”

Toronto resumes its schedule Saturday against the Ottawa Senators, where all eyes will be on the last-ranked power play. During the 6-3 victory over the Penguins, the Maple Leafs were granted two power play opportunities. It’s incumbent upon Berube, Lalonde, Sullivan, along with a star quartet featuring Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares and Matthew Knies to find some chemistry and start clicking with the man advantage, if the Maple Leafs look to make the playoffs for the 10th consecutive season.