At his quarter-mark media availability, Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving discussed the team’s 8-9-2 start, the play of his offseason additions, the club’s injury situations (Chris Tanev, Anthony Stolarz, and Auston Matthews), and his faith in his head coach to pull the team out of its current rut.
Treliving’s Opening Statement
Treliving: Obviously, as we sit here today, we are not where we wanted to be or where we envisioned we’d be. We have underperformed to this point, and I take full responsibility. I am in charge of the hockey department. I put the people in place on the ice and off the ice. The responsibility lies with me, and we start today — and every day — to try to get ourselves back up and going to improve where we are.
There are lots of areas we need to improve upon. My job is working with Craig, the coaching staff, and the players to get us back to playing to the level we are capable of playing. That was the focus in the last couple of days, and as we go into tonight and beyond.
Treliving Q&A
What are the biggest areas in need of improvement?
Treliving: Well, there are lots, right? As we sit here today, our record is indicative of how we’ve played. Obviously, we are in the results business, but there are nights when you play well and lose. There are nights when you just score more than the opponent, but you haven’t played well. Far too often, even in games that we have won, we haven’t won the game. Sometimes, we’ve scored more goals.
I look at a couple of areas, in particular. We just have to play a more connected game, starting defensively. We have given up too much. That is on our whole group, from our goaltending through to our whole group. We have given up too much defensively. That wasn’t this team last year, right?
We are not playing connected, and when I talk about connected, it is on both sides of the puck. Generating offense, we’ve scored goals, but to me, we haven’t done the things we need to do to generate offense on a regular basis. Conversely, we haven’t done the things we need to do collectively as a group to prevent the other team from scoring.
Number one, it is getting back to being a connected group. The inconsistency of effort, in some cases… There lot of nights where I don’t question the effort, but there have been some inconsistencies there.
The enthusiasm of our group — when you go through a difficult time, it is easy to feel a little bit tight. We need to get the enthusiasm back in our group.
There have been injuries, but why has the group not been able to grasp the concepts of the way you and the coach want the game to be played?
Treliving: Good question.
First of all, yeah, there have been injuries, but everyone goes through injuries. If you look around the league, there are good teams that have injuries. To me, that is a losing mentality. Certainly, there are players you are not going to replace. I have been in this game a long time, and I am yet to have a meeting with a player who says, “You know what? Give me less opportunity.” Everybody wants more opportunity, and everybody wants a bigger role. When you go through injuries, it allows people to have a bigger role. To me, injuries are what they are; it is not an excuse, and we have to find a way to get through that.
Whatever analogy you want to use about being on the same page — I use “being connected” — I believe fully in Craig and his messaging. When I talk to the players, too, they believe in it. But there is that disconnect that we’re not doing it. It comes back to the inconsistency.
It is always the big question in sport. Why don’t you just go do it? That is what we have to work through. I’d love to be able to say, “It is this.” You have to keep hammering home the message. You have to keep working with these guys on a daily basis for them to grasp it. That is the challenge in front of us.
The players seemed to grasp it last year and embrace the structure Craig Berube prefers. What changed? Is it the personnel?
Treliving: Great question. That is what keeps me up at night.
I would say that just because you did it last year or last week, it doesn’t make it so that you’re going to do it. You have to dig in.
Last year, talking a little bit technical, we’d give up zone time. We’d give up some shots. What we wouldn’t give up is a lot of stuff inside. We kept things away from our net — the prime opportunities.
To me, it is a commitment to doing the work. That is really what it comes down to. The plan is not a different plan. Just because you did it last year… As I said earlier, you have to commit to the work. That is a big part of it.
The style we want to play is a hard style. Unless you commit to the work, it doesn’t matter what you have done in the past. That is where I see a little bit of the fall-off: doing it together, you doing your job so I can do my job, and committing to the hard parts of the game. That is where we have fallen off right now.
You said you believe in Craig Berube. What leads you to believe he can lead the group out of this?
Treliving: I’ve seen what he has done in the past. I have a belief in the messaging that he has given. Craig didn’t become a bad coach overnight. When you go through difficult times, the easy and natural thing is to pick off the coach, the manager, or whoever. The way out of it, to me, is not pointing fingers, but digging in together.
That is what we intend to do right now: dig in together and find solutions. Craig and his staff are working hard at it. I support and have all the faith in the world in him.
How much patience do you have in terms of considering a coaching change?
Treliving: I have all the faith in our coach right now. I don’t look at that as the issue.
When you go through things like this, understandably, everything gets talked about and looked at. Right now, my job is to support our coach, support his message, support our group, and push our group.
What is your assessment of the new personnel you brought in over the offseason?
Treliving: The new guys would tell you — and I am not here to start singling out people — that there is a different level they can get to, right? If we were sitting here in September and said, “When we get to the 20-game mark, this is what my game should look like,” I think all of them would say it is under where their expectation is or our expectation is.
They need to be better. We have to help give them a path to be better. We have to continue to work with them to be better. Certainly, the expectation is that they can and will be better.
How much patience do you have with the group before you make moves? How much are your hands tied by a lack of draft capital to use in any kind of trade?
Treliving: You are always looking to make your team better, regardless of where your team is at. There is not one path where you say, “Today, I am going to ship out five guys.” The reality of the business is that you are not trading your way out of problems.
Whether we are sitting where we are today or sitting where we were last year, the job of the manager and my staff is to always look at ways to be better. That doesn’t change.
You have to have patience in this job, but patience isn’t inactivity, either. You are always looking if there are ways to make our team better. We always look at those opportunities if they are out there. We continue to do that.
The majority of the problems we have need to be solved within the group. We are not airlifting in 15 new people tonight. This is the group we’ve got. The job of all of us is to maximize the people we have and get them to play at the highest level they can.
Do you feel like this team has established an identity, or is it a part of the disconnect you’re talking about?
Treliving: 100%. There has been too much vanilla with our team.
That is a big part of what you try to establish with your team: What is it going to look like on a nightly basis? When you are going well, you have a really good indication; there are going to be good nights and bad nights, but you have a pretty good idea of what it is going to look like from night to night.
A large part of the frustration is that you don’t know how it is going to look. It has been in spurts. It has been in periods. It has been within periods. You can count on one hand how many full, complete games we’ve had.
That is a big part of it: going back to how we want to look, and getting to that on a more consistent basis.
From what you’ve seen through 19 games, have the expectations for this season changed?
Treliving: No, the expectations haven’t changed. Our expectation is to get our players playing at a high level. We are not worried about anything other than the next day. That is really what you’re looking at. You have expectations of where you want to see your team at the end of the day, but right now, it is about getting our team playing to the level they’re capable of.
When it’s like this, there are lots of holes in the game. There are lots of areas to improve upon. Before we start worrying about expectations, it is about getting the individuals and the team to the level they’re capable of playing at. That is the focus — nothing more than that.
Is there an area of the roster you are looking to improve in particular?
Treliving: You look at all of them. It is a pretty general statement.
If I break down the roster right now, from the goaltending part out, that is an area we want to stabilize. Joe wasn’t with us at the beginning of the year, and we’ve gotten Joe back. As we’ve gotten Joe back, Anthony has gotten injured. Our hope is that we can get Anthony back and healthy, and get our tandem to stabilize that.
When I talked a little bit earlier about the team defensively, I don’t just pin it on our defense. To me, that is more of a team aspect, but sure, our defense shares in that. Getting out of our end a little bit easier and moving pucks is an area we look at.
You are consistently and constantly looking at ways to improve your team. It is a motherhood statement, but we will continue to look at all positions.
Would you be open to moving future assets in a trade — draft picks and/or prospects?
Treliving: I am not going to get into speculation. We are not going to start panicking and throwing things overboard just to do something. If there is a way we can make our team better…
Again, with where we are at right now, we could bring in certain players, but if we are playing the way we are playing, it is not so much an individual thing as a team thing right now. Put anybody in the uniform; if we are playing the way we are playing, we are probably going to have the same result.
Number one, get the group stabilized and figure out the areas we’ve identified where we can be better in.
As far as the market is concerned, it is stuff we do every day. That doesn’t change, regardless of where we are in the standings.
With all of the injuries at center, do you have any regrets or want a do-over on how the David Kampf situation played out?
Treliving: David didn’t want to play with the Marlies, right? He left the team. He made it clear to us that he wanted a new start. I worked with David on different opportunities to see if there was a trade for him. At that point in time, he decided that a fresh start and moving on were what he wanted. We wish him all the best.
We are going through a bit of an injury issue at the center position right now. I look at it the other way. It is an opportunity for Jacob Quillan to come in. We’ll see what we have there.
No one wants to go through them, but at the end of the day, you’re going to have them, especially in a season like this, where it is condensed. There are zero excuses being made. I look at it the other way; it’s a real opportunity to see the resilience of your group.
People will be given more opportunities. Everyone is looking for more opportunities. We will see now who steps up.
Does the tightness of the standings give you some optimism about the possibility of a turnaround?
Treliving: I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the standings right now. At the end of the day, you have to be process-driven. We want to win the game — you need the result — but if your process isn’t right, the odds of you getting the right result are very rarely going to occur.
Our focus right now is on making the picture very small. What are the areas we need to improve on? Continue to work at that. Once your process gets right and your game gets right, you can start to focus on where things are in the standings.
We are aware of what is going on in the league. It is tight — this is as tight and competitive as I can remember the league being — but that is kind of inconsequential if you are not getting your game right. You can’t expect everyone else to lose so you can stay afloat. That is where our focus lies.
How is the team approaching the Chris Tanev injury? When are you hoping he might be ready to return?
Treliving: It is not to be cute, but I don’t have timelines on a lot of the guys. I know we sometimes get criticized for being grey with return dates. We’ll probably know more in about a week or so with Chris, in terms of clarifying a little bit more of a clear return date.
We miss Chris. At the end of the day, the reality is that it is hard to replace top people. Now, it comes back to what I said earlier: Everybody goes through injuries. I am not going to sit up here and make any excuses. We have other people who need to step in and fill the roles, but the reality is, when you miss top people, there are big shoes to fill.
We miss Chris, but it is an opportunity for someone else to dig in.
Is there any clarity on Auston Matthews?
Treliving: He is coming along. He skated this morning. We have listed him as day-to-day. He is not going to play tonight. I would suspect Thursday is probably not a possibility, but after Thursday, we will probably at least get a sense of how things are responding. I don’t anticipate it’ll be too, too long, but probably, Tuesday and Thursday are out of the question at this point.
What did you see in Anthony Stolarz’s game up until the injury?
Treliving: I thought Anthony had a really strong start. We had games where it came back to what I said about having more goals at the end of the night, but not outplaying the opponent. We got two points, but we didn’t win the game, if it makes any sense. I thought he was responsible for giving us some points early.
As we were a little bit concerned about when Joe wasn’t here, I think the workload caught up to him. He’d be the first to tell you his game dropped a little bit. I think it is tied a little bit to the number of starts he had.
Our hope is that we get Anthony healthy. I have all the faith in the world in Anthony. I am glad to see Joe back; they’re a big part of our team, the tandem, and how they play off of each other.
His start kept us afloat in some games, and then, like our team, there are some areas to improve on.
