Thursday was a tectonic NHL news day, punctuated by high-profile press conferences and surprise announcements. For both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Pittsburgh Penguins, two of the NHL’s signature organizations, significant changes were made atop their hockey operations hierarchy.
As Thursday morning unfolded, dueling press conferences were held in Toronto and Pittsburgh, just one hour apart.
At the first newser in Toronto, Brad Treliving sat on the dais with Brendan Shanahan as he was introduced as the new general manager of the Maple Leafs, succeeding Kyle Dubas. An hour after Treliving’s commentary to the hockey media hordes in the centre of the hockey universe, Dubas himself was unveiled alongside senior Fenway Sports Group (FSG) executives as the new president of hockey operations of the Penguins.
GO DEEPER
Penguins hire Kyle Dubas as president of hockey ops
The knock-on effects from these hires and the processes that molded a momentous day of NHL news will shape the future of two storied NHL franchises in the years to come. In the immediate aftermath, however, there’s a ton from Thursday that’s worth parsing, unpacking and reading into.
And in doing so, we have some winners to anoint and some losers to whom we must offer consolation. Let’s break it all down with winners and losers from this latest spin of the NHL executive carousel.
Winners
Kyle Dubas
In the immediate wake of his messy, mystifying departure from the Maple Leafs organization, Dubas found the autonomy he wanted in Toronto in Pittsburgh.
Wooed by the likes of Mike Sullivan, Sidney Crosby and various FSG luminaries, Dubas had options and parlayed his success with the Maple Leafs (in the regular season, anyway) into one of the best jobs in the sport.
The incoming Penguins president of hockey operations was received rapturously by Penguins media and fans during his introductory press conference on Thursday, displaying the engaging, frank communication style, clarity of mission and collaborative approach — asked about Penguins goaltending, he name-dropped the club’s goalie coach; asked about his schedule, he mentioned the head of the Penguins communication department — that has become his signature as an NHL executive. It was a performance that stood in marked contrast with whatever it was exactly that preceded him.
Despite the outpouring of goodwill that greeted the opening of the Dubas era in Pittsburgh, the Penguins job comes with significant short-term challenges. On Thursday, the mandate that was described at Dubas’ availability was wide-ranging. It left no doubt about who is setting the direction and calling the shots in Pittsburgh going forward.
This is an outcome that should serve to remove any lingering doubt about whether Dubas mishandled the negotiation as his Maple Leafs tenure deteriorated in mid-May, and it’s an outcome that cements Dubas’ status as the most in-demand hockey executive in his age group.
Brad Treliving
On Thursday, Treliving formally began his tenure as the head of hockey operations in the Toronto pressure cooker.
Given the circumstances surrounding his unveiling — including the high-profile drama that has unfolded since Toronto’s elimination and the announcement of Dubas’ hire in Pittsburgh 30 minutes prior to his scheduled press conference — Treliving landed in a tough spot. Characteristically, he handled it with warmth, good humor and charm.
He projected the sort of confidence that was required to close the page on a confusing chapter for the Maple Leafs.
Catapulted of his own volition from the wreckage that was his final season with the Calgary Flames, Treliving landed on his feet on Thursday in one of the most coveted executive roles in hockey. That’s a neat trick, and alone makes Treliving a major winner.
There are dark clouds gathering on the horizon for this Maple Leafs team. The Atlantic Division remains an absolute gauntlet, not only because of the continued presence of the Boston Bruins and the two perennial Cup finalists in Florida, but also because the Buffalo Sabres are an emerging buzzsaw and the Ottawa Senators are a couple of savvy depth additions and some ownership stability away from really taking off. Even the Detroit Red Wings would probably be a near playoff-caliber team if they still played in the Western Conference.
Treliving will have to navigate major contractual decisions with key superstars like Auston Matthews in short order, jumping right back into the fire just 12 months removed from a nightmare summer in which his Flames club lost both Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk. There’s a lot to get right, and precious little time with which to do so.
In Toronto, however, Treliving inherits a lot of talent, the untold resources of the highest revenue team in the sport and a chance to put his stamp, to some extent anyway, on a historic franchise.
Fenway Sports Group
The comparison between the methodical, professional and ultimately decisive way that FSG ran their first search for a top executive with the sturm und drang that unfolded within Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) in recent weeks couldn’t have been starker.
Now that’s not entirely fair. The Penguins missed the playoffs, which granted FSG more time than MLSE had. They still get credit, however, for how they used it.
In conducting a search for a new top hockey operations executive, FSG turned over just about every rock in the industry. They interviewed experienced candidates like Marc Bergevin and Peter Chiarelli, who have been general managers in the past. They reportedly sought out the opinions and strongly considered progressive executives like Buffalo’s Jason Karmanos, Columbus’ Cam Lawrence and Carolina’s Eric Tulsky. FSG went down the road with player-development-focused candidates like Mathieu Darche and player-personnel-focused candidates like Steve Greeley, and spoke with seemingly every member of the New Jersey Devils organization, too.
Deliberate and disciplined, FSG cast a wide net and picked the brains of a diverse assortment of some of the smartest people in the sport. And when Dubas, their top choice, became serendipitously available late in the process, FSG was flexible enough to move decisively and put on a full-court press to land him.
FSG has been far from infallible in the baseball and soccer world and is relatively new to the NHL landscape, but in making their first big executive personnel decision on the hockey side, FSG conducted a rigorous, thoughtful process that benefitted at the finish line from a favourable bounce. That’s confidence-inspiring stuff from the new Penguins owners.
The ‘progressive executive’ archetype
It’s one thing for Theo Epstein to win two World Series with the Boston Red Sox and emerge on the other side as the most in-demand executive in baseball. Epstein’s success was, effectively, unassailable.
Though Dubas and Treliving are intelligent executives and talent evaluators, you couldn’t say the same for them.
If you wanted to be deeply uncharitable and narrowly reductive about it all, in fact, you could even point to the sparse playoff track record of both executives and suggest in iffy faith that in moving on to greener pastures as quickly as they were able to from Calgary and Toronto respectively, both gentlemen failed upward.
Dubas and Treliving aren’t precisely fellow travellers, but they’re both relatively young and both have the reputation for being progressive and data-friendly in their approach to managing hockey teams. Neither should be gauchely described as “an analytics general manager,” but it’s telling that in their previous jobs, both promoted R&D personnel to the role of assistant general manager (Chris Snow in Calgary, Darryl Metcalf in Toronto).
Both Dubas and Treliving also hired high-profile database builders in their previous jobs: David Johnson of HockeyAnalysis.com in Calgary and Metcalf in Toronto, who developed ExtraSkater.com. It’s one thing to hire numbers crunchers and silo them within an organization, treating them as esoteric sages and occasional punching bags for old-school hockey people within a mostly arbitrary, immature decision-making process. It’s another to be methodical about developing proprietary data for the purpose of referencing it yourself to make better hockey decisions.
In any event, the old front line in the hockey analytics battle has moved so far in one direction over the course of the past decade that on Thursday, officially and for the first time, one could argue that the NHL saw not one, but two data-friendly retread hires to top executive roles. If that’s not a sign of progress, what is?
It doesn’t stop there. Dubas specifically suggested he was going to be on the lookout for a progressive executive to join his new-look Penguins organization as general manager, someone with a skill set that differed from and complemented his own. So Dubas’ hire in Pittsburgh and elevation to president likely creates another opportunity for an open-minded, data-friendly, dynamic executive to work in the role of general manager of an NHL team.
Sheldon Keefe
The notion that the Maple Leafs might part way with Dubas and yet retain Dubas’ longtime collaborator and handpicked bench boss Sheldon Keefe would’ve seemed nearly unthinkable two weeks ago.
As a memorable Thursday unfolded, however, the odds moved strongly to favour Keefe returning to coach the Maple Leafs next season.
“I think he’s a really good coach,” Treliving said of Keefe at his introductory press conference. “My view is determining whether a guy is good, bad, indifferent — you have to get to know him. I’m coming in with no preconceived notions.”
If that seems a bit noncommittal, it was to an extent, but Treliving went on to say that his getting-to-know-you process with Toronto’s current bench boss would be handled expeditiously and that he’s been impressed from afar by the way Toronto’s high-skilled players have grown under Keefe’s coaching, citing their two-way improvement in particular.
Meanwhile, it’s been reported by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman that Brendan Shanahan’s preference is to retain Keefe, something that was made abundantly clear to the candidates the Maple Leafs president interviewed for the general manager job.
The specific way this has all played out, the challenges to stability that Dubas’ departure ushered in, seem to have tipped the scales in Keefe’s favour. That makes him one of Thursday’s under-the-radar winners.
Losers
Brendan Shanahan
Shanahan landed a strong, credible replacement for Dubas on Thursday, but there’s still a lingering sense of incredulity about what exactly happened in Toronto over the past few weeks.
That puzzlement shines a harsh spotlight on the man who sits in the highest chair in the Maple Leafs’ hierarchy.
As the dust has settled, it’s apparent that there’s more to this story than what naturally meets the eye, but here’s what we know: Shanahan and the board had decided they wanted Dubas to stay, but it took some time before Dubas decided that he wanted to stay. And he only wanted to stay so long as certain conditions were met.
You know how this one ends. On Thursday, despite those facts, the Maple Leafs introduced a new general manager as Dubas was preparing to give a press conference of his own in Pittsburgh.
Two sides don’t get from point A to point B like that without there being a breakdown in trust of some kind, and the reaction of those in the Maple Leafs front office since — including the pointed resignation of Jason Spezza — certainly reads like a partial repudiation of Shanahan’s leadership. Those are tough optics.
Then there are the dueling Dubas and Shanahan press conferences that bookended the week of Dubas’ departure from Toronto.
Dubas, who Shanahan and the board declined to extend last offseason, spoke in a year-end presser about family difficulty, handling the pressure of the job and agonizing about whether or not to return. Ultimately Dubas decided he wanted to return and at that point, his agent presented Shanahan with a new offer.
In response, Shanahan and the MLSE board decided to fire Dubas instead — with Shanahan explaining the decision and revealing all of the gritty details in a remarkable, unnecessary press conference.
It’s never a good sign for a leader in any field when their actions and comments can be eviscerated thoroughly in a half sentence the way Shanahan’s were in a Dubas statement that noted only, “I will not get into the specifics of what I consider to be reasonable and consistent but private discussions.” It was the professionalspeak equivalent of saying “Get a load of this guy.”
With the events of Thursday now in the rearview mirror, we’re left to wonder if Shanahan simply got outmaneuvered. If Dubas’ heartfelt commentary was genuine, and I want to note that I believe it was, then Shanahan’s reaction reads as uncaring and troublingly out of touch with the state of mind of his most senior hockey operations deputy. If Dubas’ heartfelt commentary about his family situation was a cynical negotiating ploy, then Shanahan took the bait, self-destructed and all but gift-wrapped FSG’s top candidate to them. Either formulation poses some really tricky questions.
Despite a concerning process, the outcome for Shanahan and the Leafs is a solid one. Treliving is a quality hire in any circumstances, but in these ones especially.
On the whole though, and for the first time since Shanahan took over in Toronto nearly a decade ago, the “Shanaplan” looks like the “Sha-No-Plan.”
Steve Greeley and Mathieu Darche
Greeley and Darche were candidates for the Penguins general manager job until the 11th hour. The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun reports that both candidates were only informed that they were out of the running on Thursday morning once FSG finally had Dubas’ autograph on a piece of paper.
Greeley and Darche are both reputedly talented, young hockey executives and appear to be strong candidates for a top job down the line, but to have the applecart tip over this close to the finish line has to be difficult to swallow.
Mark Giordano
Veteran Maple Leafs defender Mark Giordano was just an innocent bystander when he was absolutely crushed by Treliving, his longtime general manager in Calgary, who dunked this ball with no regard for human life:
"Yeah, it's good to see those guys. Gio, it's good to see him still playing at 75." đŸ˜‚
Brad Treliving on continuing his strong relationship with Giordano and Brodie in Toronto from their time in Calgary. pic.twitter.com/b1yAkJk478
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 1, 2023
NHL Draft recusal rules for incoming executives
One of the restrictions on Brad Treliving: he cannot be at the draft table.
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) June 1, 2023
As part of granting permission to the Maple Leafs to interview and ultimately hire Treliving as their new general manager, the Flames organization was granted certain concessions. The major one is Treliving’s effective recusal from the 2023 NHL Draft process.
One can understand that there are competitive considerations here, given that Treliving has been a part of Calgary’s draft preparation process into the final month. Those considerations seem overstated, however, when weighed against the more global importance of ensuring organizational leaders are involved in performing due diligence, vetting potential draft picks and projecting key organizational values in the selection of players.
This is probably just the cranky, fretful former PR guy in me screaming to get out, but there are real reputational risk factors to consider whenever an organization makes a draft selection. The moment a young man is drafted by an NHL team, they become a representative of the NHL and the organization that selected them. We’ve seen in recent years with controversial draft picks like Logan Mailloux and Mitchell Miller just how vital it is for an organization to make sure they’re picking not just the right players, but the right people.
The Miller episode is particularly noteworthy here. First-year Arizona Coyotes general manager Bill Armstrong had just been hired as the Coyotes’ top hockey operations executive and was prevented from being part of the draft process that year. The Coyotes later renounced the rights to Miller after the organization learned more about a bullying incident in his past following a report by the Arizona Republic.
We’re left to wonder if that sordid episode could’ve been avoided entirely if the wider interests of the sport and the importance of responsible leadership had been given primacy ahead of relatively precious competitive considerations.
In an increasingly complex world, some hockey considerations have to take a backseat, regardless of how things have been done in the past. These recusals should be rethought. The draft is too important and the implications of getting the selections right are too vast for key executive leaders not to be involved.
(Top photo of Kyle Dubas: Nathan Denette / The Canadian Press via AP)
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2023-06-02 13:11:33Z
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