TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs are entering a new era.
That was the message from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley on Tuesday when he met with media to discuss the firing of general manager Brad Treliving on Monday.
Pelley said decided to let Treliving go amid a disappointing season for the Leafs over the past couple of weeks, with the intention of waiting to announce it until Tuesday. It was at Treliving’s request that the news went public immediately prior to Toronto’s game against Anaheim on Monday night.
Assistant GMs Brandon Pridham and Ryan Hardy will manage the Leafs from here while Pelley spearheads an “exhaustive” search for a “data-centric” manager of hockey operations to guide Toronto into its next chapter.
“I honestly believe that we didn’t have the alignment, we didn’t have the culture, we didn’t have the structure that we needed to be successful,” said Pelley of parting ways with Treliving. “I don’t believe that the current state of the team rests entirely on Brad’s shoulders, but after analysis throughout the entire year, including countless conversations with key personnel and hockey observers, I made the decision, supported by ownership, that the team must chart a new course under different leadership to achieve our ultimate championship goal.”
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Pelley said finding the right replacement for Treliving — whom he hopes to have in place by late May or early June — will be “the most important decision I’m likely to make in my time at MLSE” and said his determination to find an “evidenced-based” candidate stems from the recent overall of the MLSE-owned Toronto FC that combined data and cultural checks.
“Evidence-based decisions are never wrong, right?” Pelley said. “That’s not to say that there’s not room for heart. But it’s evidence-based. So I can’t tell you exactly what the [new] structure will be. I’m methodical in everything that I do from a structural perspective. We will take time. I’ll get more feedback from more hockey observers. But there’s not a right or wrong way for us to build a championship team.”
At this stage, Pelley is open to hiring both a GM and manager of hockey operations or a single hire to take on both positions. He also said the future of Leafs coach Craig Berube, who was hired by Treliving in May 2024, will be determined by the new manager.
Pelley iterated several times he does not want to be part of the Leafs’ day-to-day operations and is looking for fresh faces to come in and handle those tasks alone.
What Pelley isn’t entertaining is the idea of a full-blown rebuild despite how far the Leafs have fallen this season.
Treliving’s departure was made with eight games remaining in a lost regular season, with the Leafs are on track to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2016-17. They’re sitting seventh in the Atlantic Division with a 32-30-13 record after defeating Anaheim 5-4 in overtime on Monday night.
Pelley believes in the “foundational pieces” that Toronto has, though. And whoever takes the reins from here will be in charge of maximizing the Leafs’ current roster while also acquiring assets.
“We need more draft choices. We need more prospects,” Pelley said. “But if you look at the generational players that we have…we have to find a way to increase and to improve that lineup, and we need to do it rapidly. The [pieces] we have in place gives you the confidence that we can contend very quickly with the right person [coming] into place, with the right structure in hockey ops.”
How much of Toronto’s problems seeped into the dressing room and affected those players, Pelley couldn’t say. But he was adamant that establishing a sustainable culture geared towards success was imperative.
“I can’t talk about the culture inside the dressing room,” he said. “But how you would fix that would be, first of all, identifying if it is a problem, and you would have to ask the head coach, and you’d have to ask the players. I think culture goes through the entire organization. I don’t throw around the word accountability lightly. It’s critical, and accountability means that every player holds each other accountable.”
Something else Pelley wouldn’t touch on were any specifics about what exactly was wrong in the Leafs’ previous alignment or structure under Treliving. While Treliving didn’t hold his post for long, he still left significant fingerprints on the club.
Treliving took over as Leafs GM in May 2023 after spending nearly a decade as GM of the Calgary Flames. It was Brandon Shanahan, the Leafs’ president of hockey operations at the time, who hired Treliving following his decision not to extend the contract of then-GM Kyle Dubas.
It wouldn’t be long before Treliving began making changes. He fired then-coach Sheldon Keefe in May 2024 when Toronto failed again to advance past the first round of the playoffs for the third time in Keefe’s four seasons behind the bench. Treliving brought in Berube to replace Keefe, and Berube’s first season in 2024-25 was a success, in so far as Toronto reached the second-round of the postseason, but blew a 2-0 series lead to Florida and ultimately fell in seven games.
That disappointment encouraged further change. While Treliving and Berube remained, Pelley did not renew Shanahan’s contract, and he departed the organization in May 2025. Pelley said then that the Leafs had the right organizational structure in place at the time. That apparently changed quickly, and Pelley contended that Toronto wasn’t prepared going into this year to keep pace with its competitors in the Atlantic Division.
“I thought we had the right leadership in place,” Pelley said of seeing Shanahan out. “I honestly believe that we didn’t have the alignment, we didn’t have the culture, we didn’t have the structure that we needed to be successful. I’m not going to talk about injuries [including a season-ending MCL tear to captain Auston Matthews]. The only thing that I would say is that we need to be better. We need to be able to adapt quickly. And we definitely didn’t see the train coming, which was the Buffalo Sabres and the Montreal Canadiens, and how strong those two teams are, along with the likes of Detroit and Ottawa and Boston.”
Another contract negotiation — this one with Toronto’s top winger Mitch Marner — failed to materialize under Treliving, and the Leafs ultimately orchestrated a sign-and-trade with Las Vegas on July 1 to ship off the franchise’s leading scorer since 2016.
It was inevitable that there would be adjustments made on the ice without Marner in the lineup. Toronto simply failed to respond the same to Berube in his sophomore season. The Leafs have struggled on all fronts in 2025-26, from lackluster goaltending to inconsistent scoring to unreliable defense. Toronto has been out of postseason picture most of the year, but Treliving remained a staunch supporter of Berube whenever asked about the coach and his present – or future – with the club.
That is a moot point now. The Leafs are only looking ahead. Pelley intends to leave no stone unturned from here in determining how the Leafs can flourish after floundering.
“I’m comfortable doing anything that gives the Toronto Maple Leafs the best chance to win the Stanley Cup,” said Pelley. “Period. End of story.”
