The Maple Leafs’ front office overhaul continues.

The club has reportedly parted ways with a litany of staff members, including Darryl Metcalf, Assistant General Manager of Hockey Research and Development; Mark Leach, Director of Amateur Scouting; and Dave Morrison, Senior Advisor of Player Personnel.

Since John Chayka and Mats Sundin were hired, they have brought in a new Assistant General Manager, Judd Brackett, and a Chief of Staff, Freddie Hamilton; overhauled the entire NHL coaching staff and parts of the AHL staff; and, of course, made a significant number of player personnel moves.

Starting with the most senior, Dave Morrison had been with the Leafs organization since 2004, when John Ferguson Jr. was in charge. Since then, he survived six full-time general managers: Cliff Fletcher, Brian Burke, Dave Nonis, Lou Lamoriello, Kyle Dubas, and Brad Treliving.

Morrison originally served as a scout before being promoted to Director of Amateur Scouting, most notably overseeing drafts that produced William Nylander (not Nick Ritchie!), Nazem Kadri, and Morgan Rielly, but also drafts that included Tyler Biggs and Frederik Gauthier. In 2015, he became Director of Pro Scouting, a position he held for two years before transitioning to Director of Player Personnel.

Truthfully, it’s remarkable that Morrison lasted through so many regimes. With more than two decades in the organization, he brought a wealth of experience, but you can also fairly wonder if it was simply time for a fresh start for everyone involved. Morrison was essentially serving as an advisor by the end, but he generally drafted well during his time running amateur scouting and could offer the perspective of someone who had experienced success in that realm.

Similarly, Darryl Metcalf joined the Leafs in 2014 after running the successful analytics website ExtraSkater.com. He was originally hired as the club’s Director of Hockey Research and Development and helped build out Toronto’s analytics department. In 2018, he was promoted to Special Assistant to General Manager Kyle Dubas before eventually becoming Assistant General Manager of Hockey Research and Development in 2022.

Over the years, the Leafs invested heavily in their analytics department, but it’s difficult to pinpoint where that investment consistently translated into meaningful organizational advantages. It would be hard to identify even a single trade the Leafs have definitively won over the past decade. They’ve certainly made some solid deals, but no obvious home runs come to mind.

That isn’t entirely on the analytics department, of course, as the organization also relies on its pro scouting staff. The analytics group contributed to draft preparation and internal player evaluations as well. Again, it’s difficult to argue the Leafs have been an elite drafting organization over that stretch—although they’ve certainly had a few solid drafts—or that they’ve consistently evaluated their own roster particularly well.

The department itself had already been scaled back to some degree under Brad Treliving, but it existed long before his arrival.

Mark Leach’s departure

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, is the dismissal of Director of Amateur Scouting Mark Leach.

Leach was only with the Leafs for two drafts after lengthy stops with the Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings, two organizations widely regarded as among the league’s best drafting teams during his tenure.

His first draft with Toronto is difficult to evaluate, even setting aside the fact that it has barely been a year. The Leafs technically made six selections, which sounds respectable on paper, but only two came within the top 136, with their first selection not arriving until No. 64 overall. It’s still early, but that pick—Tins Luc Koblar—already looks promising just over a year later.

This past draft is even harder to judge. It hasn’t even been a month since the event, and the Leafs selected consensus first-overall talent, Gavin McKenna. Beyond that, the class has generally been well received, and it’s worth remembering that John Chayka himself said Mark Leach would run the draft.

You’ll likely see some narratives crediting Judd Brackett for the Leafs’ 2026 draft class, but he was hired only a few weeks before the draft. The idea that he simply walked in and immediately took over the entire operation would not only be a slap in the face to the existing scouting staff but also seems highly unlikely. While he undoubtedly had input, I’d be very cautious about assigning him significant credit for this class.

Following the draft, Brackett conducted an interview with the Leafs, and one particular comment stood out:

There have been some good conversations and some challenging ones, but that is always going to be the case. We are building rapport and building trust.

The reference to “challenging” conversations naturally stands out. Whenever you bring together people from different organizations, backgrounds, and philosophies, there are bound to be disagreements before everyone is in alignment.

There was also some indication that Leach’s future was up in the air when Brackett—not Leach—addressed the media following the draft. Just three weeks earlier, at the NHL Draft Combine in Buffalo, Leach spoke on behalf of the scouting staff.

At the end of the day, it’s common for new management groups to bring in their own people. That’s already been happening since Chayka and Sundin arrived.

Will the Leafs replace these positions?

The bigger question now is whether new management will fill these roles.

We’ve discussed before that the Leafs likely had too many assistant general managers in recent years. At times, it felt like there were simply too many cooks in the kitchen, and the results arguably reflected that. But there’s a difference between streamlining the front office and simply eliminating experienced, useful people/positions altogether.

Perhaps unrelated, Rogers—now in full control of the Leafs—recently cut six radio stations and roughly 230 jobs. It’s fair to wonder whether that kind of cost-cutting could eventually seep into how the Leafs operate as well. We don’t have any real indication that this is what’s happening here yet, but it’s worth monitoring.

You can reasonably argue that Brackett will assume many of the responsibilities previously handled by Leach, but the departures of Morrison and Metcalf currently appear to be outright eliminations unless those individuals are eventually replaced.

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