On the first day of 2025 training camp, Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving joined TSN Overdrive to discuss expectations for Auston Matthews entering his second year as captain, the first training camp without Brendan Shanahan at the helm, the ongoing search for top-six right wing help, and much more.
In terms of expectations for Auston Matthews this season, we know Mitch Marner won’t be there, but Matthews should be healthy, raring to go, and dominant, regardless of who is on his line.
Treliving: I would agree. He looks really, really good. We all know he was fighting through some stuff last year and never bitched about it. He just dug in and played.
He is an elite player. It is always great to have as much talent around you, but elite players drag others up with them.
He has been here for almost a month now. There is a seriousness to him. He looks great physically. I think he is in a great spot mentally.
Some people say he had a down year. There would be a lot of guys who would pray to have a down year like he had. It is not just the goals and points. He drives our team; he drives it defensively, he drives it in his preparation, and he is looking forward to the challenge.
We all know he will have a different right winger there. Who that will be is what camp is about. We are a collection of players, and I don’t care what happened the year before. I don’t really believe momentum carries over. You are a collection of players right now, and you are starting the process of building a team.
He is the tip of the spear for us. I expect him to be driving the group, regardless of what changes have been made.
This is the first time in a decade that Brendan Shanahan isn’t running the Leafs‘ hockey operations. That is a significant change to the organizational hierarchy. A lot of people are curious about the day-to-day operation without Shanahan around. How different is it this year in regard to your role and day-to-day operations?
Treliving: It has changed a little bit. Shanny was the President of the team and had a big influence on the team. We talked every day and throughout the day. He will be missed.
My role, for the most part, really hasn’t changed. It focuses on our team and our players, our staff, and how I can support them. At the end of the day, how do we put the pieces together and make the team as good as it can be?
The job description hasn’t changed. There are a few different things now that I am more involved in than they were previously. I am very fortunate to have a great staff around me. They have taken on some more things, whether it is through Brandon Pridham or Shane Doan, or throughout the organization in different departments.
There is a little bit more that has come through in terms of the transition, but I know where my focus is. That hasn’t changed from last year to this year. My energy is directed, for the most part, exactly how it has been since I got here.
We are always tracking the size of different players, not that it matters how much weight someone has gained or lost. Morgan Rielly lost six pounds year over year. You said today that the two of you had candid conversations after last season, and he took those conversations to heart with a great offseason. What are the expectations for Morgan Rielly in terms of what you need out of him this year compared to what you got out of him last year?
Treliving: For the most part, I leave a lot of those things behind closed doors. You talk to your guys all the time.
What I would say about Morgan and what we need out of Morgan: We need the best version of Morgan. What I would ask of him is not anything he is not capable of.
I think we saw flashes of it, and there is a little bit of him getting adjusted to a bit of a new style of play last season. Down the stretch and in the playoffs — in the second half — it was better for him than maybe it was in the first half.
We talked a lot about getting Morgan back to what he is capable of doing — not asking him to be anything that he is not. To me, that always starts in the summer with your preparation. It is in your mindset.
The great thing there is that this wasn’t a one-sided conversation. Morgan was fully on board. He knows what he is capable of doing. He is the first one to tell you that there is more there than what we saw last year. This is a really, really good player.
At this time of year, you look around the league, and it is always filled with the lines about, “Best shape of his life.” But I can honestly say — and I was around the facility all summer — that there weren’t too many days when Morgan wasn’t the first guy in there and usually the last guy to leave. He has put the work in. There is a real focus and seriousness to him.
I am really looking forward to seeing what he is going to bring.
The roster is sorted out in terms of NHL players, but do you feel like there are some internal battles at camp? Is it tough to monitor with such a short camp and preseason?
Treliving: We do. Everybody likes to say there is competition, and for the most part, we have a pretty good idea. We can all pencil in the guys who are, for the most part, going to be on the team.
If you look at it, in addition to up front, I would say it holds true on the blue line, too. There are more NHL bodies than seats. That does not include some young players who are going to push. They are at that stage now where they are not 18 years old and immature. They are ready to push for jobs here.
We have more bodies than jobs, so there is going to be competition to get on the team. And then there is always internal competition in finding your role. To me, training camp is always about three things, and one of those is finding a role or solidifying a role.
I think you will see the internal competition of who is going to pick up some power-play time, who is going to play with who, where players are slotted in the lineup, and what role they’re going to fill to help us win.
I am intrigued by it. We have just under three weeks to figure it out.
It is somewhat unique to be in pursuit of a first-line right winger as camp opens up. It is not the seventh defenseman or 13th forward. This is the top line with the captain. Is that unsettling for you?
Treliving: At the end of the day, someone is going to pick up the minutes. Sure, we would love to plop somebody in there right now. We have been looking. Those players aren’t readily available. There wasn’t really a ton of action throughout the summer.
The players’ job right now is to go out and earn their opportunity there. The manager’s job is no different than any year; how do you go out and find people to make your group better? We will continue to do that.
I know we all get focused on the first, second, and third line. There are just fits sometimes. Mitch is a great player and was a great player for us. You are not just going to replace that player with one player. So how do we find, whether internally or externally, someone who can fit there?
If you look throughout the league, there are a lot of guys who you might say, “Is this guy a first-line player?” But the fit is there. The chemistry is there. They have a job description that helps one or two of the other players on the line accomplish what needs to be accomplished.
Certainly, it is an area that will play out through camp. We will continue to look at ways to help ourselves. To me, there is a great opportunity there for the players. I know there are guys who are itching to get an opportunity there, and we will see where the chemistry is.
You don’t know until you know. Chief and I talk all summer, and you have lots of great plans, but until you get out on the ice and see where the fit is… Sometimes, it is what you thought, and sometimes, it is not. You don’t know until you get into camp, play the games, and see where all the pieces fit together.
Every team feels great about itself at this time of year, but in reality, they won’t all be great. Quickly, teams will find out that they’re not that good. How do you go about starting to place calls as you look to potentially add?
Treliving: It is a good question. The fact that there wasn’t a lot of movement doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. You have a pretty good idea of what people might be looking to do.
The interesting part of this summer: Throughout the league, regardless of where you are, everybody was trying to take a step. That’s regardless of where you were in the development of your team — whether you were looked at as a team that is in the contender status, or if you are a developing team.
Some of it was financially driven. There wasn’t cap pressure or a lot of places where teams had to throw a body or two overboard. Whether you were a rebuilding and developing team or a mature team, everybody was trying to take a step.
You monitor it. You watch your team, and you watch around the league. You stay as active as you can to make sure you have your finger on what is going on around the league and continue to monitor if there are opportunities out there to help you.
We all start to get miserable tomorrow at nine o’clock as we figure out what the roles are, and all 32 teams try to make themselves better starting tomorrow. We will just continue to watch our group and try to stay as connected as we can with what is going on around the league.
In net, you have two good NHL options, and you have goalies in the minors who want an opportunity to be an NHL goaltender as well. Are you looking for one to push through and play 50-plus, or are you looking at going back and forth with goaltenders in the 40-start range, if healthy?
Treliving: It is a good question. If you look around the league at the guys who play every night, there is becoming less and less of it. Some of it is schedule-driven. We are in a year when everything is so compressed with the Olympic schedule. You are playing every other night. You have the back-to-backs, the three-in-fours, and the four-in-sixes.
We are not looking at it and saying, “Someone has to go play 50-55.” Between the two guys, we are looking for strong goaltending each night. A year ago at this time, we were sitting here with some question marks. We believed in both goalies, but at the time, I don’t know if either one had played more than 20-something games. They both played career highs last year. They were both fresh. Stolarz went through an injury process throughout the year, but they gave us good goaltending.
We are not necessarily focused on someone going and grabbing it for 50-plus. We feel comfortable that we are going to get good goaltending between the two of them.
You have [Hildeby] down there entering his third year now, so he is coming along. We have the young Akhtyamov. We think we have some depth there at the position, but between Anthony and Joe, we want to keep them healthy. If they are, we think we will get good goaltending each night. That is the expectation.
