Maple Leafs rank 24th in The Athletic’s front office confidence survey

The Toronto Maple Leafs were placed 24th in The Athletic’s annual front office confidence rankings ahead of the 2025-26 season.

Their ranking is the best it has been in the Brad Treliving era so far, with a six-spot improvement from last year,  when they placed 30th, and their 2023 placement of 27th. It is, however, a far cry from their ranking inside the top five in 2018 and 2019, when they were ranked second and fifth, respectively.

The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn noted that while the Leafs have had some success with retooling their goalie tandem and the extensions given to John Tavares and Matthew Knies, it was not enough to improve their rankings for a few reasons.

The obvious one is how the Mitch Marner saga ultimately played out. The Leafs got Nicolas Roy out of a sign-and-trade, which is something but also nowhere close to Marner’s on-ice value. Fault can be attributed to the previous regime, the current regime an d the player himself — but it’s hard to look at the end result with any sense of confidence. Getting to that point and ending the way it did was a massive organizational failure.

Objectively speaking, the Leafs lost the Marner sign-and-trade because they did not get enough back relative to the calibre of player that saw exit the organization. You can give Treliving some credit for being about to land Roy to help shore up the depth considering the alternative was nothing, but you obviously wish more could have come back the other way. How it got to that point is a whole other story, but it’s fair to say Treliving could have done better and could have done worse in the context of this move this year.

Luszczyszyn also notes that another factor in their placement is concerns over asset management and Treliving’s spotty track record with trades during his time with the Calgary Flames.

The other reason is how much the Leafs have overpaid for marginal players. David Kämpf’s now-immovable contract is a prime example. But the Leafs also paid exorbitant prices at the deadline for Scott Laughton, a bottom-six center, and Brandon Carlo, a defensive No. 4/5. When your primary competition is paying similar prices (or less) for impact players like Brad Marchand and Seth Jones, that’s a problem.

There will no doubt be plenty of fans still bitter about the Laughton trade until he starts to ramp up the offensive production, but Carlo was able to find some chemistry with Morgan Rielly who played his best hockey of the season after the trade deadline. It wasn’t easy to see the Florida Panthers pay comparable prices for impact players as Luszczyszyn mentions, but the Leafs did take that same Panthers team to Game 7 so there is a world where Treliving’s bets pay off better than it actually did.

Ultimately, the ranking is likely fans expressing their frustration about the lack of meaningful progress in the Auston Matthews era. Sure, there is now more alignment in the front office with Treliving, Keith Pelley, and Craig Berube on the same page, and that helps big time in roster construction and team direction. But that can only take you so far in a city that is starving to see its beloved hockey team hoist a Stanley Cup for the first time in nearly six decades.

We want to hear from you: Do you agree with The Athletic’s front office confidence survey of the Maple Leafs?