TORONTO — Brad Treliving was very clear about the one thing he wasn’t going to talk about on the day the Toronto Maple Leafs staff and players kicked off training camp Wednesday by meeting with the media at the Ford Performance Centre.
But that didn’t stop the second-year Buds general manager from being downright expansive when it came to the topics he was willing to address.
With two high earners — John Tavares and Mitch Marner — entering the final year of their contracts, everybody knew a discussion about their futures in Toronto was coming. Both players tried to head off the talk before even taking questions, with Marner, specifically, starting out by saying he wouldn’t be musing about the fact he can become an unrestricted free agent in about 10 months.
Treliving didn’t follow suit and get ahead of the question, but when a query about both players’ status inevitably came up, he made pretty short work of it.
“You know I’m not going to talk about contracts, so you can throw that one out of the way right off the bat,” he said in matter-of-fact tone, before praising both guys for the players they are and the work they turned in this summer. “Hopefully, they’re going to be great Leafs for a long, long time. As far as contract, those are things we’ll handle behind closed doors. If we have news to report, we’ll report it.”
Treliving, of course, is in lockstep with his fellow GMs around the league in terms of their complete unwillingness to offer updates on negotiations, and that’s an understandable stance. However, where some guys may be happy to talk around all aspects of the team without offering concrete appraisals, Treliving was quite transparent when asked to hold his team up to the light and explain to a room full of reporters — and, by extension, a fanbase that’s larger than any other in hockey — what gives him hope this year’s version of the club can go any farther than the squad that was bounced in seven first-round games by the Boston Bruins last spring.
That loss spurred talk big-time change was finally coming. Surely, Treliving and the Leafs examined that. In the end, though, they return a club the GM believes is better despite the absence of a huge summer shakeup.
“As far as what gives me hope, I think we’ve improved out roster,” Treliving said. “You don’t hit grand slams every year; sometimes you’ve just got to keep hitting singles and doubles and picking away at your roster. Getting better isn’t because you airlifted in a bunch new people. Internal growth is the best way to get better in this league, it’s not just flying in the great free agent or making 10 trades. I see percentages — two, three, four [per cent] — if we can have that internal growth with some of our younger players [and] some of the [more established] players, [we’ll be better off].”
Certainly, the Leafs do have a collection of young players within the organization who could take steps this year. Easton Cowan, a first-rounder in 2023, has turned himself into an extremely intriguing prospect. Nick Robertson, after initially thinking a fresh start with a new organization was the way to go, is back less than 10 days removed from his 23rd birthday on a one-year, show-me deal. Fraser Minten — who actually made the team out of camp last year before returning to major junior — would also be in the mix if not for a high-ankle sprain sustained on the weekend during the prospect showdown in Montreal. Then there’s 35-year-old Max Pacioretty, who’s coming to camp aiming to show he’s put his extensive injury troubles behind him. Regardless of what side of the age spectrum a player lands, Treliving is concerned with one thing. “If he can help us win, I don’t care if you’re 18 or you’re 38,” he said. “Play well.”
While nothing Treliving did around the NHL Draft and free agency could be considered an earth-shattering move, acquiring defencemen Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and (the currently injured) Jani Hakanpaa was a clear tell in terms of where be thinks Toronto had to beef up.
“We’ve upgraded our defence,” he said. “I think we’ve got the ability to upgrade our penalty-kill, an area that was a problem for us [Toronto ranked 23rd on the PK]. If you look at our team last year, I think we were second in goals-for [298, behind only the 302 scored by Colorado]. We lost 21 goals in Tyler Bertuzzi [who left as a free agent]. I look at our roster, I think there’s going to be some competition, I think we can replace those goals, not just necessarily by one person.
“I think we can shoot it in the net; for us, it’s keeping it out. From a personnel [standpoint] and bringing in [new coach Craig Berube] and his staff, I think it’s going to help us in that regard. We’ve got to check better.”
There’s no doubt the first change Treliving made — axing former bench boss Sheldon Keefe and replacing him with Berube, a hard-driving coach who won the 2019 Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues — is central to the ongoing process of trying to mold a champion in Toronto. And for all the ways Berube — even in an eight-minute press conference — presents almost as a parody of a no-nonsense coach, neither he nor Treliving think becoming a better defensive team begins with attempting to undue the DNA of all-world offensive players.
“I’m not here to take the sticks out of guys’ hands, but there’s got to be an identify to [how we play] and we do want to play a north-south game,” Berube said.
The stars are still the stars, and while everyone recognizes — and, under Berube, better be prepared for — the need to switch up the approach, it’s not as though everything they’ve done before now is getting junked, just as Treliving was never going to take a roster full of talent and set it on fire over the summer in service of change at all costs.
“It’s picking out pieces where we can be better,” he said. “Better on the penalty kill; we’ve got to get to the playoffs [and] we’ve got to find a way to be better on the power play in the playoffs; we have to keep it out of our net more than we did last year.”
Now that Treliving has talked about it, all that’s left is to find out whether or not the team he runs can actually do it.