SIMMONS: Where does duo of Maple Leafs’ Brad Treliving, Craig Berube rank among NHL’s best?

Coach and GM have a ton of competition in the Atlantic Division alone

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Published Sep 16, 2024  •  4 minute read

Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving (left) announces the hiring of Craig Berube as new head coach. Jack Boland/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

When Brendan Shanahan took over running the Maple Leafs — about a lifetime or two ago — he talked a lot about what it meant to be a Leaf and how he wanted to attract the best people in the sport for the most important Toronto positions.

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He went out and bought Mike Babcock, who was at the time one of the most desired coaches in hockey.

He went out and brought in Lou Lamoriello — a three-time Stanley Cup champion, Hockey Hall of Famer, his personal mentor — to be his first general manager hire.

Shanahan didn’t just spend for who he believed was the best. He wanted to establish the Leafs as a destination franchise.

Well, Babcock is now two coaches ago. And Lamoriello is two general managers ago. When Shanahan hired Brad Treliving as GM, he didn’t blow anyone away with the appointment. It was a necessary move at a necessary if not desperate time.

The Craig Berube hiring wasn’t flashy, either. They didn’t have to outbid anyone for Berube. He was available after Sheldon Keefe had been fired. He made the most sense to those making the difficult decision.

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But the notion that the Leafs would have the best of the best has been somewhat trampled on in a front office with Treliving as GM and Berube as coach.

They may be great together here — and as training camp starts in a few days, they may be more in concert with how they want the Leafs to play than most GM-coach combinations tend to be.

But on the Shanahan scale, wanting the best of the best for the Leafs, where do Treliving and Berube, as a GM-coach duo, rank among the best in the National Hockey League?

Or, even closer to home, where do they rank in a very competitive Atlantic Division?

Not only are the Leafs competing all season with the talented rosters of the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins, but in the battles you do not see, they are competing against some of hockey’s brightest minds.

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General manager Bill Zito won his first Stanley Cup with the Panthers this past June. That came after he was a nominee for the Jim Gregory Award as general manager of the year in 2024, 2023 and 2021.

His coach is Paul Maurice, the undisputed NHL press conference champion and the coach of more games behind the bench than everyone not named Scotty Bowman.

You could argue that Florida has the best GM-coach combination in the game if there wasn’t two other candidates of incredible strength in the division.

Jon Cooper was the obvious choice to coach Team Canada for the coming Olympics and Four Nations tournament. The Tampa general manager, Julien BriseBois, was an obvious choice to be part of Team Canada’s staff.

That Lightning combination has kept the Tampa franchise in contention since 2015. The Bolts may be slipping now — because that’s what happens to teams that win year after year — but with BriseBois and Cooper in charge, you have to give the GM and coach any benefit of the doubt.

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Don Sweeney has been both a GM of the year and a finalist for the award, and he has done incredible work in maintaining the Boston Bruins’ status as one of the league’s most formidable franchises.

Sweeney has lost, in recent years, future Hall of Famers Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron, possible Hall of Famer Tuukka Rask and the very capable David Krejci, all to retirement. Have the Bruins lost a step? On paper, maybe. On the ice, not so much.

Who else in the NHL could lose that kind of depth of talent and not take a hit while doing so?

Jim Montgomery has coached the Bruins for two seasons, one year at record-breaking pace, last season at 109 points without a centre of consequence in a league where centres are everything. Montgomery has been coach of the year. What he has yet to deliver is a great playoff run.

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The appropriate GM-coach combinations have been evident with teams that won most Stanley Cups. Last June, it was Zito and Maurice. The year before it was Kelly McCrimmon and Bruce Cassidy in Vegas. Before that, Joe Sakic and Jared Bednar in Colorado and BriseBois and Cooper in Tampa.

And while Dallas has yet to win a Cup in this era, the tag team of Jim Nill and Peter DeBoer represents as much quality as anyone in hockey. Nill has won the past two GM awards. DeBoer has been to the conference finals in both the Eastern and Western Conferences and has a .674 winning percentage since joining the Stars.

And looking back, was there ever a better GM-coach combination than Sam Pollock and Bowman or Bill Torrey and Al Arbour, Glen Sather and himself?

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As an interim coach, Berube won the Stanley Cup in St. Louis, alongside the historically excellent Doug Armstrong. Since then, he’s won one best-of-seven playoff round. Like Treliving, this is his best opportunity as a longtime NHL coach with the deepest roster he has ever had.

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Where does Treliving rank among NHL GMs? Not at the top, based on his record in Calgary, probably not at the bottom. This is the greatest opportunity to succeed.

He inherited a contractual conundrum from Kyle Dubas which he is just beginning to dig his way out of. The Berube hiring — the Keefe firing — was the most proactive move he has made on the job.

Now he has to compete with Sweeney and Zito and BriseBois in his own division, with Nill and McCrimmon and Stan Bowman, and with those who no longer have GM titles like Jimmy Rutherford and Sakic around the league.

This was never the view Shanahan had of his primary hires. But this is his — and the Maple Leafs — reality now.

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