After his acquisitions of Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, GM Brad Treliving joined TSN Overdrive and Real Kyper & Bourne to discuss the near and longer-term implications of his deadline moves for the Maple Leafs organization.
What can you tell us about being in on one of the biggest names of the day (Mikko Rantanen)? Were you setting an internal deadline about when you have to move on? Would that describe what your day was like?
Treliving: As a policy, I don’t talk or comment on speculation. But good try, haha.
The word I would use around the deadline is discipline. We are out in Denver, so the bell rang at 1 p.m. There are mile markers.
When you are working on a certain file, you have a temperature on what teams might be looking for in the market. This year, we added a center. You have a pretty good feel coming in. It is all the homework you have to do preparing for the deadline around what might be available and who might be fishing in what waters. You have to be disciplined in terms of setting time frames.
The managers are pretty good. It is a competitive group, but you are usually fishing in more than one lake. You are trying to forecast what might be out there and what might be happening. There is a feel to it when something might or might not be close. You have to pivot.
It is important to set mile markers and times. You could be fishing for option A, the bell goes, and you haven’t been able to check down a little bit. That is all part of it. You have a staff who might be working on different files. You are taking and giving a lot of phone calls and texts.
It ebbs and flows. It can be quiet for a little bit of time. You are trying to balance the day and balance your time.
I have been doing it for a long time. We finished the Carlo deal, and I think I looked at my watch and saw 58. We got under the wire by two minutes. It is not the closest I’ve been, but it is pretty darn close.
If it is 2:58 Eastern time, do you only need to get a call into the league to know you’ll be fine?
Treliving: Yeah, you register your trade with Central Registry. Brandon Pridham’s typing skills were tested today to get it cooked up there and get the email in on time. He got it under the wire at three o’clock eastern before the bell went off. That is a critical part of it.
You go into trade calls, and you get into the queue to get everything finalized.
Brandon Carlo must have been fairly high up on your list of ideal fits for your blue line. How do you see your defense pairings shaking out with another big right-handed defenseman?
Treliving: He is certainly a guy we know well. I have watched him a lot, and our group has watched him a lot over the years.
They have had a lot of success in Boston. It is a hell of a team that Don (Sweeney) put together there. Year after year, they have been a great team. I got a sense in the last little while that they may make a decision to move some people along, so we had some discussions.
I think he fits really well. He is a big, long guy. He moves well. He has great range. Those long guys are hard to play against. It is not about throwing guys over the boards, but they get in the way. They are long, and it is hard to get through.
He moves well laterally, is excellent on the PK, and is hard on around the paint. We have been trying since we got here to add some more length to the blue line, and he helps bring that.
Chief and I talked a bunch leading into this — depending on what may or may not come our way — about how things may set up. Another righty was important to me. Jake (McCabe) has played a lot on the right, but you see now with Chris Tanev out for a little bit, how our depth has been tested a little bit. He is another guy who can eat big minutes. He can eat big minutes on the penalty kill.
How everything sorts out is for Chief and the staff to figure out, but we have looked at a couple of different options once Chris (Tanev) gets back. I think we have different options now, whether that is Rielly-Carlo, and then you have OEL, Benoit, and Myers there. There is flexibility. I think everybody does some different things.
The goal was to come in here and make our team better. We feel confident we have done that.
What was the defense market like in general? How did you end up arriving at Carlo?
Treliving: The market was a tight market. You are trying to determine who is in, who is out, and who is available. Not to put the wingers down, but the centermen and the right-shot D are hard to find. Good on the sellers; when there is limited product, you can charge what you want to charge and see if people want to buy.
We have been aware of Brandon and have been a fan of Brandon’s for a long time. He had great success in Boston over his tenure there. He may not be the sexiest name, but I think he has been a big part of that success.
Again, it’s some of the “guts of the game” pieces — the PK, he is a big man, he is long, he is rangy, he has great reach, and he is hard around the blue paint. Adding another right-shot D was important to handle some of those tough minutes and distribute those minutes with someone who can handle some PK time. That was critical for us.
We like his size. We like his range. He is coming from a great program in Boston, which he has been a big part of.
He was excited about it today. It is a switch for him. I said I liked the look of him in the blue jersey over the black and gold. We were happy to get him. It was a grind, but we were happy to bring him aboard.
On defense, you now have Chris Tanev signed with term, Jake McCabe signed with term, Morgan Rielly signed with term, Brandon Carlo signed with term, and OEL signed with term. Those are five veterans and five guys with multiple years on their deals. How beneficial is it for you as a GM to know you have it locked in and that there are no rentals currently? What does it open up for you in the future?
Treliving: It is important.
Look, we were shopping in the rental market up until the deadline. We were shopping in the last few days. But you always prefer (term); you pay a price, and you don’t like to see it walk out the door a few months later.
We have an experienced blue line. We wanted to add some length to the blue line. I think there is a lot of versatility there. You have some guys who are left shots who can play on the right. It is a veteran group. They can all do different jobs. I think you have puck movers, and you have guys who can defend hard.
Having that cost certainty and having those defensemen, the big thing with term is that we are living in a rising-cap era. When you can get those numbers locked in… The only day more difficult than deadline day is July 1, so when you are not out there shopping for veteran defensemen or right-shot defensemen on July 1, that is a big part of what we tried to accomplish.
I am excited about the group.
The whole fan base had been talking about a third-line center and Scott Laughton for a long time. Why was it important to make the acquisition, and why is Laughton the right guy for it?
Treliving: He is a Toronto kid, and that is not the reason you bring him back here, but I have been watching Scott since he was in Oshawa. The first thing that everybody talks about when it comes to Scott is that he is such a character guy. I remember him in junior as the captain of his junior team. The people who have played with him, coached him, and worked with him (speak to) the highest level of character. Very competitive guy.
I think he just brings a lot of depth to the center-ice position. It is an area we have tried to look at for a while now. Even coming into this deadline, there weren’t a lot of centers available. I think this is the first deadline in recent memory where there were a lot of teams going in the night before or two nights before the deadline that could’ve gone either way on whether they were buying or selling. You are trying to get a sense of what was going to be available in the market, especially at the center position, which is a premier position.
There is versatility to his game. He can kill penalties. He has some bite to his game. To me, there is not much not to like about Scott.
If you listen to some of the words spoken about him in Philly when he was up there and the impact he had, it was an emotional day for him. He has been a Flyer his whole career, but he got emotional on the phone when I was talking to him today about coming home, being a Leaf, and what it means to him.
It was exciting to add him. I am looking forward to seeing him join the group.
As a manager, you have to be thinking about how it might piece together for the playoff lineup. Right now, there is Matthews, Tavares, Laughton, and Kampf at center. When you look at the four-pack up the middle and the options on the wing, how do you feel about your depth up front as we creep closer to the playoffs?
Treliving: You are always greedy. You always want more. We were trying to navigate that. The objective is to get as many good players as you can. I think we are a better team today than we were a day ago.
I like our depth down the middle. It is not just those four guys. It is important to have seven centers — seven guys who can play the middle. It is such an important position, and you are going to have injuries. Guys who can move off the wall into the middle of the ice are critical. We have that now, and they can do different jobs.
We needed to take a little bit of weight off of guys on the penalty kill. I think Scott can help there and in some key situations — defensive-zone faceoffs and some of the heavy lifting there, matchup-wise.
I like the look of it better today than I did yesterday. There is some versatility; the guys can move back and forth. We still have 20-plus games to go, and it is still a grind to the end of the year. Having that depth is important.
We saw your division rivals get better. What kind of pressure did you feel to add as you did?
Treliving: You pay attention to what the neighbours are doing, right? That is the job. You know what is going on in the league.
You have to have a discipline about you. There is always a lot of media talk and speculation. That is part of what gets the juices flowing — what may or may not happen — but when you are actually in the business, you have to have discipline about trying to make your team better and doing what is right.
It is not just about someone making a move and then having to keep up with the Joneses.
But you must feel better today about going toe-to-toe against Tampa or Florida.
Treliving: Those are two great teams. If you look at those two teams, year after year, they have been there. The Tampas, the Bostons, the Floridas… the Stanley Cup champions, the Cups Tampa won, and Boston (was there) year after year, and then there are the teams who have been building.
There used to be a separation between the four and then the other four. Those days are gone. Those teams have been building for a long time. They are making pushes now. It is competitive every night.
You certainly pay attention to what is going on around you, but ultimately, the job is to find out which areas on your team you can strengthen. It is my job — and our staff’s job — to be focused on that. That is what we tried to do throughout this week.
Heading into the playoffs, do you think you will have access to injured players like Max Pacioretty and Jani Hakanpaa?
Treliving: We are hopeful.
It has been a long road for Hak. He is still working away at it.
Patch came back and played right before the break. He had a tweak in our first practice back after the break. He tried to work through it and took a day. He had some stops and starts. The doctors determined that he needs to get it better.
We are hopeful he will be on the mend and that we will see those guys, but we are not sure. At the end of the day, we are not sure. We will see how it goes.
The addition of Scott Laughton gives us a little more depth down the middle. I think it gives some different options for the coaching staff. They have the marker out today and are looking at different combinations. What we try to do is give the coaches as many options as we possibly can to ice the best lineup.
I get the question, but we can’t look too far ahead here. Our focus is tomorrow night. I know it sounds cliche, but that is the focus.
When you go through the deadline, it is always a bit of an unsettling time. It is exciting for the fans, and you are out there trying to help the team, but there is a human side to it for the players, too. There is a lot of stress. Everybody knows what they signed up for — no one is asking for any apologies — but as much as it is exciting that we added some people today, we had some guys who left. Some real good people: Conor Timmins, Connor Dewar, and the young kids, Nikita Grebenkin and Fraser Minten, are good guys. Their world got turned on its ear today.
I am aware of that. That is the other side of this business. My job is to do whatever we possibly can and push as hard as we can to make our team as good as we can make it, but you can also do it in a way where there is a sympathetic understanding of what those guys are going through when packing their bags up and getting out of town. That is other side of it.
We are focused on tomorrow night in Colorado. Chris (MacFarland) has done a hell of a job improving what was already a really good team. We have our work cut out for ourselves tomorrow night.
Do you now address the group after the deadline and let them know you believe the team is ready to do something special, or do you leave that to Chief?
Treliving: I will go down there tomorrow. I was set up at the hotel today when the guys were skating. I try to limit my time down there. They don’t need to see me down there a whole lot. But I am going to talk to them tomorrow.
This is our group now. I felt it was my responsibility to add to the group. They deserve it. I thought we had areas we needed to upgrade. You are always greedy and want more. You never know how it is going to flow. But this is the group we are going to jump into the fight with.
You always want to give the guys something. The guys aren’t stupid. They are looking around them and seeing where the competition is at. You have to be focused on not just doing something to do something. We tried to be focused and disciplined about attacking some areas we felt we needed to attack, but you always feel better when you feel like you can give the guys a little help the rest of the way.
We saw a significant potential UFA sign in Dallas. You have one as well in Mitch Marner. Does a day like today give you confidence that you can revisit the situation with him down the road and still get him signed to a new contract?
Treliving: The good news about that is that I can give you the same answer I gave you in training camp. Our focus today and for the rest of the season is going to be on the season.
Mitch has done a really good job of just focusing on the team and on his own play. He has just been terrific. Look at the year Mitch has had. He has driven the group on many nights, especially those chunks of the season earlier on when Auston was out. We’ve gone through many injuries, and Mitch has driven the group on many nights.
We will continue to try to do business quietly and behind the scenes so as not to make too much noise here in Toronto. We will worry about the games, and when it is time to worry about those things, we will get them addressed.
