The Maple Leafs won't replace Brendan Shanahan. So it's up to Brad Treliving to correct their fatal error

Toronto Star

25-05-2025

It's easy enough to rhyme off the organizational sins that led to Friday's Maple Leafs press conference that explained the firing of team president Brendan Shanahan.
On Shanahan's 11-year watch, the Leafs handed over the franchise to a rookie general manager and a rookie coach; traded the fiery Nazem Kadri for lesser pieces; lost the indispensable Zach Hyman for nothing to free agency; and allowed Shanahan's relationship with GM Kyle Dubas to erode to the point that Dubas pulled a backstabbing power play that required his inconvenient firing in the crucial summer of 2023, this with the team in obvious need of a roster shakeup and Mitch Marner's trade protection about to kick in. Beyond all that, the Leafs never advanced beyond the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It's an ugly inventory that overshadows a lot of the good Shanahan did for a franchise that was lost at sea when he arrived.
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Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment president and CEO Keith Pelley doesn't plan on hiring someone to replace Brendan Shanahan after it was announced the Hockey Hall of Famer's contract won't be renewed. Pelley said he has the utmost confidence in general manager Brad Treliving and head coach Craig Berube, adding the team has all the resources it needs to win championships. (May 23, 2025 / The Canadian Press)
But you can make the case Shanahan's biggest error was taking the wrong side of a timeless nature-versus-nurture debate. Are big-game players born or made? Can the lessons of repeated failure create playoff-worthy 'dawgs,' to use the word Kadri recently popularized in a brilliant bit of social-media tsk-tsking at the Colorado Avalanche for trading away a clutch-time dominator named Mikko Rantanen.
Through the years as the Leafs' record of playoff futility got uglier and uglier, Shanahan essentially doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on the idea that his Core Four players could change their essence. Shanahan made a bet that with the help of world-class sports psychology, and the mentorship of veteran teammates and the lessons of losses, the Leafs could eventually train their best players to have the growl of playoff pit bulls.
Alas, when the lights have been brightest, the highest paid Leafs mostly performed more like lapdogs.
What the Leafs should do about that now that Shanahan is gone is anyone's guess. But MLSE CEO Keith Pelley, on the job for a little more than a year, made two things clear on Friday. For one, the franchise's standards are higher than the low bar Shanahan set for more than a decade.
'Make no mistake about it, making the playoffs and winning rounds is not our aspirational goal,' Pelley said. 'Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup.'
For another, the Leafs are GM Brad Treliving's team now. There are no plans to replace Shanahan. There are also no easy solutions to fix the core issue Shanahan allowed to fester: the big-game malaise of an entitled team whose captain has never scored a goal in a winner-take-all loss.
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Pelley didn't claim to have any answers. As much as he said he would work closely with Treliving and coach Craig Berube, he acknowledged the hockey decisions will lie with the hockey men. But Pelley did take a moment to quash the idea that the pressure created by Toronto's fans and media is at the heart of the team's non-performance — a notion put forth most recently by members of the Florida chapter of the NHL players' union.
'Pressure is a privilege,' Pelley said Friday. 'I respect, understand and appreciate (the fans') disappointment in the way their season ended. I thank them for it, the way that they've invested in the team … Winning is the only thing that matters.'
Give Pelley credit for having the market savvy to understand that fans are to be honoured. It's OK for players to label the chatter around the team derisively as outside noise. But considering the Shanaplan era began with Salute-gate, a player-driven eff-you to Leafs fans that marred Dion Phaneuf's captaincy, it's a fine line between staying in your bubble and snubbing the people who inject the passion and the cash into the operation.
Pelley said he'd sat down to dinner with Berube on Thursday and called him an 'incredible asset' — implying Berube might lend insight as Treliving partakes in the task of team building. A coach, of course, is only an asset if his GM respects his counsel. There's no reason to believe that respect doesn't exist. But coach-GM relationships can be tricky if the coach thinks he's co-GM; let's not forget Mike Babcock's adventures in occasionally burying Dubas acquisitions in what amounted to a territorial flex.
Now we'll see how Treliving sees this team. If Shanahan essentially tied Treliving's hands behind his back, famously calling the Core Four to assure them their positions in Leafland were safe in the wake of the Dubas's firing in 2023, Treliving has options — albeit, thanks to Shanahan's stubbornness, not wholly attractive ones. Letting impending free-agents Marner and/or John Tavares leave for their salary-cap space is on the list.
Pelley was complimentary of Treliving's buoying of Toronto's goaltending and defence.
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'I think we've made strides,' he said more than once.
And he was deferential to Berube's possession of a Stanley Cup ring.
'Chief changed the culture,' Pelley said.
But neither Treliving's roster building nor Berube's influence changed the end result: the seventh loss in seven winner-take-all-games in the Shanaplan era.
If you don't have dawgs, what do you do? Treliving and Berube are on the clock to find this team some snarl.