Last week, news broke that the Maple Leafs had relieved general manager Brad Treliving of his duties, ending an underwhelming tenure with the team that never made sense from the day he was hired in late May 2023. Treliving had previously been with the Flames for nine seasons before he and the team mutually agreed to part ways just weeks before the Maple Leafs hired him.
At the time of his departure from Calgary, PHR’s Josh Erickson noted that Treliving was well respected in NHL front offices, and it was likely he would find a new role quickly, which proved to be a spot-on prediction. However, that likely won’t be the case this time, at least not for an NHL general manager role, as Treliving may need to step away from the game or rebuild his reputation before another team offers him a prominent position.
Treliving’s career in NHL management is similar to that of former Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Ron Hextall, who was let go by the team around the time Treliving left Calgary. Hextall has not held an NHL role since then, and it’s possible Treliving might also need to take some time away from the game or be forced to do so if he can’t find work as an NHL executive.
Some folks might find it unfair to compare Treliving to Hextall, but their two recent runs as GMs show many similarities, as does their history in previous organizations. And as unflattering as it may be, both Hextall and Treliving inherited teams capable of winning the Stanley Cup, with star players at the top, and both oversaw the dismantling of their contention windows.
Folks in Philadelphia would argue that Hextall did the same thing when he was with the Flyers, just as fans of the Flames might feel the same about Treliving’s tenure there. Hextall and Treliving both operated without much semblance of a plan, so many of their moves appeared to be reactions to a changing market, attempts to undo a previous mistake, or attempts to pick up what they could when they realized they had a glaring hole in their roster.
But were Treliving’s moves in Toronto really that bad? The short answer is yes, and the long answer is much more complicated.
It wasn’t all bad for Treliving in Toronto, as the team did win a division title and pushed the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers to seven games in the second round last year. However, mistakes made early in Treliving’s tenure eventually compounded, leading to a year where almost nothing went right for him and the Maple Leafs.
In his first summer on the job in 2023, Treliving signed David Kämpf to a regrettable four-year contract worth $9.6MM before free agency. He then entered free agency and made a couple of solid short-term signings in Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi.
However, those deals were surrounded by a series of poor bets as Treliving signed Ryan Reaves to a multi-year deal, and agreed to one-year contracts with John Klingberg, Ilya Samsonov, and Martin Jones. Except for the Reaves deal, none of the other moves were particularly bad on their own, but they left the Maple Leafs in a similar spot come playoff time, as they bowed out in the first round to the Bruins. During that season, Treliving also extended Auston Matthews and William Nylander, essentially doubling down on a core four template that had yet to produce a deep playoff run.
Most of Treliving’s early mistakes during his tenure involved trades, where he often traded away depth players for very little and then spent a lot to acquire slightly better players. A clear example is a series of transactions late in the 2024-25 season, when he traded Connor Dewar and Conor Timmins to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a fifth-round pick, and then acquired Scott Laughton, along with a fourth- and sixth-round draft pick, for a conditional 2027 first-rounder and prospect Nikita Grebenkin.
Now, Timmins might not be an NHL defenseman at this point, but it’s hard to argue that Laughton is much of an upgrade on Dewar, especially after the season both players have had. In fact, it’s fair to say that Dewar would be an upgrade on Laughton at this stage of their careers, and he is five years younger than the 31-year-old Laughton. Essentially, those two trades marked a significant loss of talent for Toronto in just a few hours. It made their existing NHL roster worse and removed a key draft asset from their future. These two trades highlight a major issue for Treliving: he lost nearly every trade he made in Toronto, and this was nothing new.
The list of poor trades could fill an entire article on its own, with the most glaring example being the Brandon Carlo trade, which could haunt the Maple Leafs for years depending on how the first-round pick turns out.
But again, many of the moves weren’t necessarily bad; quite a few were unnecessary and revealed that Treliving didn’t have a clear sense of where his team was or what they needed to improve. A good example is the March 2024 trade when Treliving acquired Joel Edmundson from the Washington Capitals in exchange for a 2024 third-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick.
This move wasn’t terrible, but Edmundson was only a depth player at that point, and Treliving traded for him when the team desperately needed a top-four defenseman. It felt like a half measure, more like the Maple Leafs’ GM doing something just to say he did it. Critics will note that giving up two mid-round picks isn’t a big deal, but making three such trades a season quickly depletes your draft pool — which is exactly what has happened to Toronto. The prospect pipeline is now empty, and if the Maple Leafs are to have any hope for the future, the next GM will have to make the most of the few draft picks they do have.
Overall, Treliving’s tenure will be remembered as a period when he and the team never quite aligned, leading to a lot of movement but little results. The reality is that Maple Leafs fans and media may claim that Treliving didn’t do enough to push Toronto over the hump and to the next level in the playoffs, but the truth is that Treliving didn’t do enough right, and in fact, he barely got anything right for the Maple Leafs. That’s why they need to conduct another hockey management search at a time when their competitive window is closing quickly.