Now and then, The Hockey News - Toronto will look back on some of the in-depth features from the past years. With Brad Treliving about to embark on his third season as Maple Leafs GM, this will be the first time he doesn't have Brendan Shanahan to report to. Shanahan was relieved of his duties as President and Alternate Governor of the Maple Leafs in May.
With Shanahan gone, Treliving now reports directly to Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment President Keith Pelley. But for all intents and purposes, Treliving will be able to adopt his own plan with the Shanaplan abandoned.
This article below looks at Treliving's first moves as GM in the summer of 2023 and perhaps it gives us more clues as to what is ahead.
BY RYAN KENNEDY (From. Sept. 18 2023, Vol. 77, Issue 03)
Here is a revised copy with verified, working internal thehockeynews.com hyperlinks inserted behind major names and subjects from your text:
Before Brad Treliving was GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, before he was GM of the Calgary Flames and before he was president of the Central League, he was a 6-foot-4, 225-pound defenseman in the minors. Treliving played for the ECHL’s Winston-Salem Thunderbirds, Louisville Icehawks and Greensboro Monarchs, among others. But one of his most intriguing stints in the ECHL came with the Columbus Chill in the early 1990s, nearly a decade before the Blue Jackets brought NHL hockey to the Ohio capital.
Those Chill teams weren’t particularly successful, but they did lead the league in one category: penalty minutes. And keep in mind, a real-life Hanson brother, Steve Carlson, coached one of their opponents, the Johnstown Chiefs. “Terry Ruskowski was the coach, and there wasn’t really any confusion as to what the style of play was,” Treliving said. “There were a lot of tough hombres. It wasn’t a highly skilled team, but it was a tough group. I still stay in touch with a lot of those guys. (Donny Granato – Sabres coach) was one of our few skill guys and a really good player. They had a really good run there as a minor-hockey town.”
In Treliving’s first season with the Chill, he finished with 170 PIM in 49 games. That put him fifth on the squad, though left winger Rob Sangster was right behind him with 158 PIM – and he only played 15 games. Jason Taylor played 21 games and had 147 PIM. Blueliners Barry Dreger (362 PIM) and Mark Cipriano (333) led the way. This is a roundabout way of saying Treliving always had to be ready to drop the gloves, whether or not he was initially part of the provocation. “There were a lot of rumbles,” he said. “They’d probably put you in jail now for some of the stuff we did back then. It was a different time. There was beef more nights than there wasn’t.”
Which brings us to the present. The Maple Leafs have been known as a skilled team for years since a rebuild netted the franchise the likes of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander through the draft and John Tavares via free agency. Toronto had all the resources a sports team could hope for and a front office led by the well-respected Brendan Shanahan and a great young mind in GM Kyle Dubas.
Playoff success did not follow, however. The group constantly stumbled in the first round, whether it was understandable (Washington, Boston, Tampa Bay) or not (Montreal, Columbus). From his perch out west in Calgary, however, Treliving saw a team coached by Sheldon Keefe whose reliance on firepower decreased as it improved over the years. “They’ve been a really good team for a long time,” Treliving said. “They have high-end talent, and the view of Toronto was always of a team with high-end talent. But with each year, they really evolved in terms of their checking game, and to me, that’s a really good job by Sheldon and a really good job of buy-in from the players. Maybe, years ago, they would have tried to outscore you, but in the past couple of years, they haven’t given up a lot. That’s been an evolution.”
Not that you need the recap, but for posterity’s sake, the past six months were pretty earth-shaking in Leafs Nation. Toronto finally got over the hump by beating Tampa Bay in the first round of the playoffs, then faltered against the underdog Florida Panthers in Round 2. So, was it a step in the right direction or yet another Leafs letdown? The idea of running it back seemed pretty reasonable before palace drama set in. Dubas was fired, landing on his feet soon after in Pittsburgh. Treliving, who had left Calgary after the sides mutually agreed to part ways, got the job as GM in Toronto and had to get up to speed quickly during a busy summer. The Leafs had a ton of UFAs – including playoff warriors such as Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari – but they also didn’t have a lot of cap space, and Treliving acknowledged some of the players they wanted to keep made it to the free market because the business side of the game dictated the team’s decisions.
Loading up before the trade deadline also meant Toronto didn’t have much draft capital for potential deals. While the team actually wanted to add picks at the draft in Nashville, they ended up making just three selections – and only one (first-rounder Easton Cowan) in the top 150.
So Treliving’s first real splash with the franchise came on July 1. That, of course, is the first day of free agency – a.k.a. Canada Day. The first big bang came with the signing of premium enforcer Ryan Reaves, which, due to the three-year term, had folks a little worried. But in the ensuing days, Treliving and crew inked Tyler Bertuzzi (one of the best UFAs on the market), Max Domi and offense-minded defenseman John Klingberg. Leafs Nation was on board.
In Reaves, Bertuzzi and Domi, Toronto has been given a new set of armor. This team now looks literally ready to rumble and, as Treliving memorably put it in a press conference, has some “snot” in it. But the goal is to win a Stanley Cup, not to become the next Columbus Chill. Reaves believes his new team is in line to do just that.
“They got over that first-round hump last year, and that was such a big weight off their shoulders, maybe overly emotional because it took so long,” Reaves said. “Maybe too many emotions ran into the second round. But, to me, they’re trending in the right direction. It’s a team that could win this year, could win in the next three years. I wanted to go to a contender, and Toronto is a contender.”
As the best fighter in the NHL (according to a survey of former enforcers we did for THN.com this summer), Reaves is a nuclear option when it comes to his fists. But donnybrooks aren’t a big part of the post-season anymore, and Treliving sees more than one-dimensional value in the winger. “He can still be an effective forechecker,” he said. “He can get in and make things difficult on opposing ‘D.’ We’re not looking for a guy to play two minutes a game. It gives the rest of the group backing, and on the fourth line, it gives us a little more identity. We want to be a strong forechecking group and add some physicality. He’s a guy that opposing teams are aware of.”
Reaves is also a guy his teammates will be aware of immediately. The man is not exactly a wallflower. And on a team previously known for being on the quiet side from a culture standpoint, the new guy is ready to make noise. “I don’t ever come into a locker room shy or quiet,” Reaves said. “I tend to come in and chirp people right away to get that over with. I don’t play a lot of minutes. I don’t score a ton of goals. What I do is physical play and fighting, making sure guys feel safe on the ice.
“Off the ice, I take that very seriously. I like to plan the parties. I like getting the boys together on the road. If someone tends not to come to events, I make sure everyone’s there. It’s really important. The best teams I’ve been on are when everyone is together all the time off the ice. The worst teams have been when there are little cliques that hang out and you never really get the full group together.”
His new teammates know what Reaves brings, and they’re on board already. “Reavo is going to make us all feel pretty easy out there,” Bertuzzi said. “I’m excited.”
Bertuzzi himself may have been the best grab for Treliving over the summer. One of the most coveted free agents on the market, Bertuzzi put up five goals and 10 points in seven playoff games for Boston, tying for the team points lead with Brad Marchand and the team goal-scoring lead with Taylor Hall. But tactics-wise, his value is more in how he gets his points. “Tyler is an inside-ice guy,” Treliving said. “He gets to the net. He’s around the paint. He can score in close, which we needed. When you talk about the playoffs, you have to get to middle ice. There’s not a lot of highlight stuff. It’s being in those areas that aren’t fun to be in. He’s abrasive, but he’s got an underrated skill set, really good hands in close, tipping pucks, making plays. The tight-area game.”
The flip side of Florida’s feel-good run to the Cup final was the teams the Panthers left in their wake. Sure, goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky was massive in victories over Toronto and Carolina, but the Leafs and Hurricanes made life easy on him by mainly staying on the perimeter. Give Florida’s defense credit for making the middle of the ice a war zone, but as Vegas proved in the final, you could ring up goals on the Cats if you didn’t mind paying the price physically.
Bertuzzi, who already has one 30-goal campaign to his credit from his time with the Detroit Red Wings, is more than happy to get the greasy goals Treliving was talking about. “It’s just natural,” Bertuzzi said. “It’s my tendency to get to the net and other areas where pucks will bounce.”
As an Ontario boy from Sudbury, Bertuzzi is happy to be playing closer to home. For Domi, signing in Toronto is literally a homecoming, not to mention a family tradition. Max’s father, Tie Domi, is a Leafs legend whose No. 28 is still worn by fans at Scotiabank Arena today. Hall of Famer Mats Sundin is practically family, and Max grew up in the city, playing for the same Don Mills Flyers organization as Marner (the two later became teammates with the OHL’s London Knights).
Domi doesn’t fight as much as his dad did – few players do – but he’ll drop the gloves when necessary, and he proved in the 2023 playoffs with Dallas that he can be an effective post-season presence. “When things amp up, those guys embrace it,” Treliving said. “Max can play two positions, he can move up and down the lineup, and he’s got a little edge to him. He can skate, he has a tremendous skill set, and he’s another guy that’s not afraid to get into those areas that aren’t always pleasant.”
For Domi, it’s been an interesting career so far. The Leafs are the 28-year-old’s seventh NHL franchise, but in recent years, he’s been one of the guys acquired before the deadline by playoff teams looking for a push. Toronto seems to have just cut to the chase by grabbing him in the summer. “When you have a chance to join a team that is already established and already a contender, it’s a huge boost to your confidence when they want to bring you in,” Domi said. “I had great conversations with Brad and Keefer about certain things they’re looking for that I can jump in on. They want a guy who plays hard every single shift and will do absolutely whatever it takes to help his teammates and win hockey games. I’m looking forward to the challenge and the opportunity. I just can’t wait.”
Of course, it does make it even more special that his dad can go back to cheering for the Leafs full-time now. “He’s ecstatic,” Domi said. “He’s a fan like everyone else at this point. For me, winning is everything, and he was never able to do it. It’s the hardest thing in sport for a reason. To get a chance to do it in the same jersey that he wore for a decade is something that makes the hair stand up on my arms. I look forward to trying to accomplish that with this group. There isn’t a bigger fan of the Leafs right now than my dad.”
So, it feels like the Leafs have all the components to make a Cup run – but so did last year’s Bruins, and look at how that turned out. There are no guarantees in today’s NHL, so Toronto must ride the clichés and take it one game at a time. But with the skilled core the Leafs already had and the new guys they’ve added up front, they’ve put themselves in a great position. “We can’t worry about April, May and June right now, we have to earn our way there,” Treliving said. “But these guys can play games when the temperature warms up.”
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