Keith Pelley’s Press Conference Was A DISASTER … What Now?? 😬 w/TSN's Darren Dreger | BB Clips

Maybe all of this hubbub with Keith Pele and the Leafs and all that maybe would have died

down.

Right now it's still fresh.

The press conference with Keith Pele, fart in church.

Would that be the analogy that some would use?

Ah, yeah, some might.

I'm not sure what I expected going into it.

I don't know Keith Pele well.

I know him.

I mean, you know, I've been around the network television world for pushing 30 years.

So we've crossed paths on many occasions, you know, and, you know, he's a very confident

dude.

He's got the corporate lingo nailed right down, right?

So we got a full dose of that yesterday.

But when you approach something like that and you're alone, it's not like he had somebody

flanked on either side, you know, a member of ownership.

I mean, he represents ownership, you know, he doesn't have a hockey operations department

per se.

You know, his head coach, Craig Baroube is on the road, so he doesn't have access to

him.

So there's Keith on an island.

And I thought he was trying to believe politically correct, whereas correct as he could be,

he just doesn't have any answers.

And so it's easy for all of us to then dissect after the fact.

And, you know, I was reading through some of my notes as I watched the media avail yesterday

and the one that really got to me.

And, and I mean, you guys know Brad Trillivine from the previous life of the Calgary Flames.

But, you know, just a refresher course.

So Brendan Shanahan has president of hockey operations hired Brad Trillivine to come in

as general manager, then they hired Craig Baroube.

So all three of those hockey minds aligned, right?

And I would admit or submit that when they hired, when Baroube was hired and before that

Trillivine was hired, I mean, I felt, I feel like they felt like culture was not going

to be a problem.

Accountability.

Nope.

That's not going to be a problem.

Structure.

We've got all that covered off.

And there will be automatic alignment.

Yet Keith Pelley is opening statement yesterday said, without structure, culture, et cetera,

you can't be successful, and that's why change is happening today.

Okay.

Well, I mean, you fired Shanahan and look, there should be no tear shed over that or over

Brad Trillivine.

Right?

I mean, Shanahan had an ample time to execute the Shanahan plan and it just didn't work.

I mean, they lost a pivotal game, didn't get to the conference final, Florida goes on

and Florida wins this Stanley Cup.

You know, Brad Trillivine, he's not hiding, he's not looking for excuses or any of that.

Toronto's had a horrible year.

But to say all of that and say, well, that's the reason why we're here today is because

we need a better alignment of culture and structure and all of that.

I'm not buying it.

You're a representative of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.

And the reason you're sitting in that chair is because wins equate to tens of millions

of dollars in ownership or revenue.

That's what matters.

So among those, you know, there's lots of different ways.

The other thing that the other takeaway for me that was strange was Pelley's perusal

of the Atlantic Division and identifying Montreal and Buffalo and saying like they were

a train that came out of nowhere, pardon?

I mean, Montreal has been in this only build for a stretch now.

They've done it patiently and methodically and now they're reaping the rewards that

come out of it.

You know, Buffalo has been the mud for how many years until this year.

And what made it more transparent, because I'll tell you this guys, I know that Toronto

was in trade discussions with the Buffalo Sabers and with the Montreal Canadians.

Now I don't know that Matthew Neyes was ever really likely going to be traded at the

trade deadline.

But the two names that Keith Pelley mentioned, most definitely would have been names that

Brad Trillivine would have asked for in those trade conversations.

Michael Hage and Radham Murkut.

And I can tell you that when that came out, just the way it was just disclosed that way,

a couple of teams went, nah, that's no good.

You just stay in your lane here.

So it feels like tampering to be mentioning other teams players, and that's the Sabers

top prospect, big demand that they love.

Yeah, it was at Hage's terrific too.

And look, it's not that, you know, Murkut was involved in the St. Louis Blues negotiations

with Robbie Thomas and maybe Uncle and Parakeye, I don't know.

But, you know, for the president, not of hockey operations, of Make Believe Sports,

that entertainment to start lobbying up prospect names and, you know, saying that you got

hit by a train, which was Buffalo and Montreal, which kind of knocked you out of your spot

in the division.

That's not reality.

That's not what happened.

To me, it screams of the organization's need for a president again, because we saw

for so many years, not that Shanahan did a great job that didn't have blemishes, because,

you know, we're a lot of blemishes.

When you have a Toronto downtown corporate guy who has sports experiences running the European

golf tour, and, you know, sports networks, TV, when the GM is in charge, and he's the only

guy above them, like, it reminds me of when Brian Burke was here, and how important that

buffer was, or Ken King and that buffer between GM and ownership, they need higher president.

Like he gets higher at GM.

Like, how is Keith Palligan going to evaluate GMs and higher?

Like, what does he feel about good GM, I mean, I'm sure a little, but clearly not as much

as someone that's worked in hockey for 50 years.

I'm with you, and he did acknowledge that they're going through the process of hiring

a search firm, right?

And he kept talking about the head of hockey operations, but didn't say is that the president

or is that the general manager?

I just know from watching with Bradshaw Living has had to deal with in this Toronto market

this year, I'm as convinced as ever, it's a two-man job.

It is because there are just too many outside opinions.

And it's easy to say, okay, well, as a general manager, you've got to block all that stuff out.

Well, yeah, I guess, but it depends where it's coming from.

You know, if it's coming from ownership with a hockey idea, or if it's coming from a friend of an owner

with a hockey idea, you know, out of respect, you're probably going to want to, you know, at least

respond to an email or listen to a conversation or any of that.

Well, guess what?

That's what the president does.

A lot of that is what the president does.

He is that buffer between ownership and hockey operations management.

And, you know, with an organization as large as the Toronto Maple Leafs, I just don't see

any way around it.

If you've got a really solid hockey voice who has some business savvy as your president,

then maybe, maybe you can go a different way with the general manager, either less experience

or, and this was another curious comment that Pellie made, talking about how everything

decisions being made moving forward are going to be data generated and evidence-based.

You know, he's got the biggest analytics department in the sport.

Do this.

No, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Yeah, they do.

But Kyle would have been a big part of establishing that in Toronto, you know, before going to Pittsburgh.

In terms of bodies, in terms of resources, in terms of how analytics are used, all of

it.

All of it.

And, and, and so again, I go back to the media, Val, and how it's easy to poke holes, but

it felt like that in and of itself screamed of needing a president of hockey operation.

If that person is sitting beside Keith Pellie and they're talking about why they fired

Brad Trillivan yesterday, we're probably not even digging this deep into the conversation.

Because you go, yeah, you know what, tree out his opportunity took a couple of swings.

He missed.

He didn't do enough.

He gets fired.

Happens all the time.

Yeah, that would have been, that was what kind of my take away, is there would have been

fans who would have been, okay, good, yeah, because Trillivan, that didn't work.

Yeah.

Fire him.

Okay, yeah, who's next, press conference, okay, instill some confidence and some hope in

me.

Yeah, I would, yeah, you would come away feeling even worse.

I would think on how to throw all the hullabaloo and bullshit comments out the window and go

find a gold tender that can stop the puck.

Their gold tender was hurt, injured, not good this year, whatever, those are your guys,

your whole world's different.

It's not a complicated business.

No, I would have all these answers and there'll be a BS, I said it to the day, if it drags,

you could go be a GM of the hockey team, guaranteed you could, are you going to be perfect?

No, is there any out there that aren't?

No.

Yeah.

Go find a gold tender.

Is Darcy Regrier a great GM at Buffalo?

No.

Dominic Asher.

Yeah.

Like, coaches, GMs ride the talent of the players they have.

That's it.

That's it.

That's all.

There's very rarely a move that's, I would say, Manta with Pittsburgh has been an awesome

move that Dubas made.

Yeah.

Get a guy off the scrap heap.

He gets your 30.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Pretty impressive.

That's a nice move.

There rarely happens.

If you have a gold tender, you're, you're a brilliant GM and a brilliant coach.

Yeah.

It's all the stuff.

This stuff is just.

Yeah.

And it's funny how it and to kind of tie it all together.

We, I think we were talking.

I saw your clip on the show the other night about, you know, is Doug Armstrong, possibly

a guy.

You've got Craig Barubi there.

Like, both of those guys in a lot of ways, because Doug Armstrong, he was maybe on his

last legs in St. Louis and Craig Barubi was an interim guy.

Bennington goes off the charts hot.

They win a Stanley Cup and both of those guys live for years.

Yeah.

Off of that one run because of a hot gold tender.

It's just interesting.

So yeah, I can imagine what you're, you're 100% accurate here.

If they're golden is better.

If the defensive group is better, I mean Morgan Riley needs a change of address.

He just needs a fresh start somewhere else.

That's not going to be an easy contract to move, but I think it happens.

You know, Brandon Carlo, maybe people didn't watch him close enough in Boston.

He has not been a fit with the Maple Leafs.

And then, you know, they've had injuries back then, Austin Matthews, you know, injury

aside, he wasn't getting 50 again this year.

Like, there are lots and I would submit this.

Now the fight aside, like the Max Dominion fight with Radco, Googlers, okay, that was emotionally

charged the other night right off the park, boom, off they go.

But if that team, if the Chrono Maple Leafs played with that level of conviction and played

for each other, the way that they played that game, even 50% of the time in the first half

of the year coming out of the Olympic break, it's probably a different story.

They can call it out to do it.

It's not a natural issue.

Yeah.

Two weeks later, it doesn't change too late, too little too late.

I got two quick ones on the Toronto.

So one of the things Keith Pelley said was, this is not a rebuild.

We've got pieces to build around.

This is a retool.

And you could build the case that a team starting with Austin Matthews and William Neelander

and Matthew and I was, wow, what a great group.

How you surround them is way trickier than pointing out that those guys are good at hockey,

which they are.

And then secondly, when we, you know, there was a recent ownership change at MLSC where

Rogers has taken over, rather than Tana Balmo and some and Bel on some and Rogers on some.

Did this become a workplace for true living where when there was shared ownership, it was

very measured contact with the owner and now you've got something that's much more

managing up than when he started, because I recall the beginning that, you know, what

he dealt with in Calgary versus there was night and day, but it might have ended up

being quite similar because he had to check in with ownership here a lot.

Right.

And I think that could be a part of it for sure.

But the owners, what they're the same as every owner in the national hockey, they all

they want to do is win, right?

There's just more volume of noise in Toronto.

And, you know, their corporate friend group, again, educated people have opinions.

Unfortunately, a lot of their opinions are hockey related, right?

So those opinions then go down to hockey management and management is like, all right, well,

I can't do that.

You know, I'd like to trade for Conor McDavid and I'd like to give up three third round

graphics, but that's not the way it's going to work out.

The retool rebuild, that was curious because if you're an experienced candidate, and I mean,

maybe it's Doug Armstrong, that whole thing is just a whirlwind of speculation, which

is why I'm okay talking about it.

I mean, I don't like the fact that this guy is under contract and unless it happened

today so far, the Maple Leafs have not asked St. Louis for permission to talk to Doug

Armstrong.

So we in the Toronto media have anointed this guy as the best candidate and the frontrunner.

But, you know, and maybe he is by resume, right?

Maybe he is relationship with Barouba if he hangs in there, I get all that.

Doug Armstrong's view of what's needed in Toronto is way different than what we heard

from Keith Pelley.

You know, Keith Pelley talked about a retool.

All right.

Well, here's what I can tell you.

The Leafs believe they need at least one good young defenseman added, okay?

So that guy comes in, you get rid of Morgan Riley somehow.

I'm not sure how you acquire that young defenseman, maybe using some of the draft picks that

you acquired at the trade deadline.

Then you shuffle the deck a little bit on the back end.

You'll hope and pray that your goal tending does stabilize as Red Identifier earlier because

there's really not much they can do there unless they use one of their goalies as trade

bait, which is possible because they've got hill to be coming and he's going to need

waivers to go back down next year.

But they need pieces up front, not small pieces, big competitive guys and a sentiment to

take some load off John Tavaris.

I mean, that's all of us things to find like a young defenseman and number 2 cent.

All right.

If you can, it's certainly a goalie, but it's certainly one of 2C about young beef.

And on top of all of that, you got to have a conversation again with Austin Matthews.

It will be two years out from the expiration of his contract.

Okay.

Well, we think we're going to be okay this year, but we're not sure because you're going

to have that conversation in May, right?

You're not having it in July.

You know, whatever he says, all right, well, I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks

and we're a month.

And I'll let you know what my thoughts are.

I mean, there's some enormous questions coming up.

Is Berby dead men walking in your mind?

Not in my mind.

I actually think, you know, I thought that was well played by Pellie and just saying,

okay, well, I mean, we need him to finish the year and he's going to finish the year

and then, you know, two years remaining on his deal will leave that up to the new management

group that will come in.

I mean, he gets a little spice here when you've got somebody like Bruce Cassidy who's

recently been cut loose.

But now again, I go back to the woes of the Maple Leaves.

If you're Bruce Cassidy, chances are you're going to have multiple options, right?

I doubt very much that Toronto Maple Leaves are going to be top of list for Bruce Cassidy

among coaching options.

There could be teams that are way more established, especially with the uncertainty around

Matthews and some of the other pieces that you would count on as cornerstones.

Boy, I look at it and Berby looks frustrated to be there already.

And this is sitting in Calgary and Martaloup, so I'm a long, long ways away from it.

But that looks like a coach that's frustrated with his group.

If I'm another coach, I'm going, yeah, what have we got going on here?

Like that whole thing.

It's the Alura 67.

If you ever do it, you'd be, you're as far away as you've been in a long, long time.

Yeah.

That's right.

Berby, like he's been frustrated basically all year.

Yeah.

I mean, frustrated that he hasn't been able to exercise, you know, a little bit more jam

out of these guys to play the game that he needed them to play that they showed at

times last year, more than times, I would say more consistently last year.

They were able to play frustrated that, you know, Mariner goes to the Vegas cold of nights.

Nick was a nice player, but they essentially got very little for for Mitch Mariner and

weren't able to replace him, you know, through free agency or other means.

And the fact that a defenseman, a right shot guy, especially that he's been screaming for

forever still as a materialized.

Well, lots of reasons why Barube would be frustrated.

I just don't like the whole thing that they're talking about is, well, we got these core

pieces.

We're going to build around them.

We got this coach.

He's not, you know, waiting to see like, it's clear to me that this coach in this core

hasn't worked.

Yeah.

And when he doesn't talk about cohesiveness and culture and everybody on the same page,

like, I don't think this coach and this core works together.

Agreed.

I agree with that.

Like, how is he not dead, man?

Yeah.

You're the next GM coming in.

Yeah.

Or you're committed to getting different players, you know, you obviously can't swap

them all out.

But if one of the big boys gets traded, and for me, it's Matthews or Neelander, you

know, the return for either one of those players, you know, like, let's just be crazy here

for a second.

You know, of Austin, Matthews legitimately were in play.

What would that package look like?

Like, you'd get probably a decent young center back, probably a defenseman.

And maybe a first round pick or two, first round pick.

Yeah.

I'd look at the random deal and add because he got trained twice last year.

Well, maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but who is even in the boat to everyone who

would want Matthews?

Yeah.

Or we can't get him a Calgary.

And all of them can't fit him in.

Like, what does he want to get?

I heard San Jose once because they got that Misa kid.

Maybe that's a, yeah.

Like, are there certain teams that would be ahead of the pack as far as getting him?

Like, yeah, well, impossible to say definitively, San Jose would make some sense to me.

I wouldn't call them a front runner, but spitballing, guys, I think Utah is going to be a big

player here.

I was going to say Utah feels sticky, kicking tires, like, they haven't been able to land

well, but it's not right now until it happens.

I'm just wondering, like, we heard the same thing with Seattle, like, oh, they offered

50 some million to Penerin.

He said, no, like, it's a great side for sale.

I think it's a bad side for sale.

Yeah.

It took less money to go.

I just think that that owner is, he wants it.

I get that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some people mention LA, right?

And they put this package together of, of Byfield and Clark and, you know, again, Droppicks.

Matthews is going to drive this bus if it gets to that point.

And I'm not sure he looks at the LA King's roster and where they're headed.

And goes, all right, well, I mean, the future might be good in LA for a year or two, and

then there's going to be a restructuring that's required there as well.

So some of the other teams that we mentioned, without, again, knowing anything about anything

in terms of what Austin Matthews wishes are, you get gets to that point.

That's where you get the trouble.

That's what I was.

We don't know, but do you get the vibe that Austin Matthews is desperate to go to a Stanley

Cup contender or see, I don't know, or maybe we shouldn't even speculate on it.

More lifestyle.

Is there lifestyle?

Yeah.

Is it taxes and lifestyle or is there winning?

Ah, yeah.

It's nice to have a combination.

Yeah.

I mean, the, the perfect scenario is, as you're right, it's, it's a combination.

And, and I think if you're looking at, at San Jose, I mean, all right, San Jose isn't

the prettiest part of California, but it's not a bad spot.

I mean, you're not that far away.

It's California.

Yeah, it's California.

You talk, again, we're just pure speculating here.

I mean, it's a nice spot.

There's lots of reasons, but I, I think that more than lifestyle and more than where he's

going to live, it's about the pieces on that team, how he would fit into that team if

it gets to that point.

And can he win for years to come?

You know, not being the last piece of a puzzle, maybe coming in the middle of the run and

seeing where it goes from there.