NHL
2026 NHL
Trade Deadline
LIVE
15m ago
Brad Treliving took responsibility for his team's failures this season. Dan Hamilton / USA Today Sports
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The Toronto Maple Leafs’ practice facility dressing room was stocked with green St. Pats gear for an upcoming St. Patrick’s Day game against the New York Islanders.
Three name plates were gone: Nicolas Roy, Bobby McMann and Scott Laughton, the three Leafs dealt at the trade deadline.
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The GM who made those trades didn’t seem overly enthused with the return, which amounted to picks in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth rounds of the next two drafts.
“Like everything else,” said Brad Treliving, “you hope and wish it was more.”
Treliving looked and sounded as downcast as he has all season — more dour, even, than in late December, days before Christmas, when he spoke about the firing of assistant coach Marc Savard.
And for good reason: The Maple Leafs’ season has morphed into a full-blown disaster and nothing about their future feels certain. Treliving wouldn’t even commit to the Leafs being a playoff team next season.
“We’re gonna get to that once we get through this year,” he said. “Today’s not the day for that. There’s change that has to occur.”
And change will be the hard part for the Leafs.
Selling was easy, even if the returns for McMann and Laughton in particular were kinda blah and the Leafs were unable to execute any major roster shakeup or take advantage of their ability to retain salary.
Building the Leafs back up is going to be the hard part, the really hard part — not just into a run-of-the-mill playoff team but into a Stanley Cup contender once more.
Or will that even be the plan? Treliving didn’t say when asked.
“There’s got to be some change,” he responded. “I think that’s for us to sit down and look hard and fast at. It’s been a disappointing year.”
It’s possible he doesn’t know — which direction the team will take, or whether he’ll even be around to execute it.
That’s the biggest question of all now as the season winds down and the offseason begins: Who’s going to be running the Leafs? Will Keith Pelley, the president and CEO of MLSE, trust Treliving to execute next steps for the organization, whether it’s building it back up or tearing it all down? Will he finally hire another president of hockey operations?
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Treliving repeatedly took responsibility for the failings of this season during his post-deadline press conference, referring to “roster construction issues,” among other things.
“The failures here start with me,” he said.
Though it’s been years in the making, it’s not hard to see how the roster got to this place heading into this particular season.
Last summer, after the Mitch Marner experience came to an end, the Leafs didn’t sign anyone in free agency who mattered. Just organizational depth highlighted by the fun but ultimately inconsequential Michael Pezzetta. There were trades for Henry Thrun, Matias Maccelli and Dakota Joshua, and later waiver claims on Sammy Blais, Cayden Primeau and Troy Stecher.
And then … nothing, until this week’s sell-off.
Treliving stressed that his goal was to “acquire as many young assets as we could.”
In the end, the assets were all picks, the best of which — a first from the Roy deal and a second from the McMann trade — won’t come until the 2027 draft. The Leafs head into the 2026 draft this summer without much in the way of quality picks: two thirds, a fourth, two fifths and a sixth.
They could certainly up that intake with an offseason trade of, say, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who wasn’t moved before the deadline.
Can they afford to move the best picks acquired at this deadline, though? Can they afford not to? It will depend on what goal the organization sets for itself: trying to contend again or beginning the process of rebuilding.
If the plan is to retool, the Leafs’ needs are significant:
It’s probably (definitely?) going to be impossible for the Leafs GM, whoever it is, to nail down everything. Just getting one move right, and then another and then another after that, would be a start. It’s been the opposite for a while, with one troubling transaction after another.
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Last summer, the front office didn’t solve any of their glaring issues, even the ones Treliving was on record about, such as the addition of a top-six forward in the wake of Marner’s exit.
There are going to be hard questions for the team to ask and answer. Whether a pathway exists to moving Morgan Rielly, whether there’s a better offseason market for Ekman-Larsson (or Brandon Carlo), whether there’s any way to add that top-end defenceman without it costing the team Matthew Knies.
The Leafs will have to figure out how to reconfigure a blue line that already has seven players under contract, including Chris Tanev, who remains a giant question mark heading into next season. Which goalies are coming back? Can the team find a way out of Max Domi’s contract, or Joshua’s? Is there an appetite for keeping Maccelli and Nick Robertson around?
Most importantly, who’s coaching the team? That will be the second-biggest question heading into the offseason: Does Craig Berube get another chance after a disastrous season? Treliving called him a “terrific coach” but added, rightly, that “it hasn’t worked.”
“If it doesn’t work we all share blame, we all share responsibility,” said the Leafs GM.
What comes next is what matters now. And what comes next won’t be easy.
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Jonas Siegel is a staff writer on the Maple Leafs for The Athletic. Jonas previously covered the Leafs for TSN and AM 640. He was also the national hockey writer for the Canadian Press. Follow Jonas on Twitter @jonassiegel
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