Confirmed with Link: Nonis, Horachek, Spott, Scouts fired. Dubas and Hunter to act as Interim GMs

[Trapper]

So think Shanny strips the "C" tomorrow off Phaneuf, or do they wait to try to trade him first?

Can't see under any circumstance he'll be back as captain next year.

If the plan is to trade Phaneuf (and meaning he won't be here by training camp), there is no reason to strip him of the C. Why add extra cruelty to the situation. Just move him if that's the plan but be professional. No need to add insult to injury.

 

[senor martinez]

So think Shanny strips the "C" tomorrow off Phaneuf, or do they wait to try to trade him first?

Can't see under any circumstance he'll be back as captain next year.

Me neither. He's the worst captain I've seen in any NHL team, ever. Did some... weird stuff during this season already and before that too.

Will be great to see so many players and "captains" be gone during this summertime anthem as we are already firing all these very stupid coaches etc. Horachek doesn't understand the game correctly, not even the spirit of things evidently.

 

[hockeywiz542]

 

[Pi]

Babcock loves control and having the ability to coach McDavid from 18-27 is one he wouldn't give up IMO.

If we get McDavid, we sadly get Babcock too. I think he's a good coach but some people are overrating him greatly. We don't have good luck with hiring high profile people. I'd rather hire a low profile coach with player development skills during rebuild.

 

[hobarth]

Like I said, drafting isn't a problem based on the amount of picks we've had.

You realize our drafting can be good and still not have a good prospect pool, right? If we keep all our picks since 06 instead of trading them away, we would've been in the top half a LOT more. The problem is, as another poster pointed out a few posts above, we've picked very few times in the first two rounds since '06 and are probably the team with the least amount of top 60 picks in the last 10 years. That's why our prospect pools have sucked, not because of bad scouts.


For those wanting that "all-star player" picked in the late rounds, Morrison has been here 9 years. So yes, it appears as if he never got one of those in the first 5 drafts he's had, but there's a pretty good chance he got one of the biggest steals from the '06 draft in Connor Brown to go along with great picks like Gunnarsson.

Can you really expect more than a huge steal every 5 years? If that's the going rate, then considering the Leafs have only had Morrison since 2006, he's had less picks than most teams, and that it's too early to predict if anybody from the '12 or later drafts will be steals (Brown looks like he will be a steal, but it's too early to know yet... Later picks take a longer time to make the NHL for obvious reasons), why do people think Morrison has done a bad job?

He got 1 steal in Gunnarsson (a 7th round pick!) and it looks like he got another one in Brown (6th round!) with a few other potentials (notably Johnson)... I'm not saying he's the absolute best, but he's definitely done an admirable job considering the amount of picks he's had. I'm very excited about quite a few picks from 2012 and onward too! It seems (for now) that Shanahan agrees with me, but we can check back after the draft.


I blame management for trading away so many picks... How do we manage to trade away more picks than contenders the past 5-10 years?!? Morrison is good in my books and I'm happy he's being retained.

You're satisfied with 1 steal from 7 years ago, another maybe good one from Europe that was probably the result of TO's Euro scouts and a bunch of names that haven't impacted the Leafs. I'm pretty sure Detroit has had even less draft choices from the top 2 rounds than TO yet they seem to be ably restocking their team. TO can't even find players that are able to make a consistently poor team, showing an obvious inability to recognize talent even in the 1st round.

It is TO's inability to draft properly that is the greatest reason I would think for the GMs trading away draft choices, lack of success can/should never inspire confidence, Morrison needs to go, now.

 

[Kurisu]

So think Shanny strips the "C" tomorrow off Phaneuf, or do they wait to try to trade him first?

Can't see under any circumstance he'll be back as captain next year.

Shanahan won't strip him off the C. He either comes back or he gets traded. Don't need anymore unneccessary drama.

 

[Daisy Jane]

Babcock loves control and having the ability to coach McDavid from 18-27 is one he wouldn't give up IMO.

If we get McDavid, we sadly get Babcock too. I think he's a good coach but some people are overrating him greatly. We don't have good luck with hiring high profile people. I'd rather hire a low profile coach with player development skills during rebuild.

i agree
i wish there was a way to get McDavid without Babcock.

 

[Kurisu]

i agree
i wish there was a way to get McDavid without Babcock.

you know we do have a chance of winning the lottery.

 

[senor martinez]

No, we can't have McDavid without Mike Babcock. It's written in a big contract that has text in it and also a crystal ball that tells all the lottery numbers.

Of course we can get McDavid without getting even into Babcock. There are other coaches as well.

 

[hockeywiz542]

Here are some interesting quotes from James Mirtle's Globe and Mail article:

When you look back at the totality of what Shanahan has done since he was hired last April, you get a better sense of why the job took this long. When he was hired in the wake of a late-season collapse a year ago, he inherited a GM in Dave Nonis who had a long-term contract that was the work of the man who had hired Shanahan, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment president Tim Leiweke.

He also inherited a bloated, underachieving staff that was a patchwork of hirings from failed GMs past.

For a new executive, one without any experience in an NHL front office, making sense of how to proceed – a little more than two months before the draft and free agency – was a considerable undertaking.

What didn’t help matters was the fact most of his new staff were in complete denial of the very problems Shanahan was brought in to root out.

Oddly, one of the men fired Sunday saw it better than most.

“We have to start to think about winning and have higher expectations,†interim head coach Peter Horachek said Saturday in a lengthy soliloquy after Saturday’s finale, his last act as part of the team.

“Our expectations have to go in a new direction. Higher. Not [to be] competitive. Not [to be] okay. That’s just not okay. That’s ultimately where we were. It was the same place as where it was the year before.â€

The reality is that, before Shanahan, accepting mediocrity had become endemic to the Leafs. They had been a playoff-missing, low-expectation team for so many years that the culture became one in which even a good month – such as before the Olympic break last season – led to puffed-out chests and sly smiles.

For all the talk of blue-and-white disease on the roster, it was right there in the front office, from head to toe.

Part of that was the insistence that they were on the right track, regardless of what was unfolding on the ice, even though their course seemed hardly planned at all.

Shanahan’s rebuild should have started a year ago. That it didn’t is a credit to how dysfunctional the organization was more than anything, with so many on hand happy to explain to the newcomer why pursuing their same senseless path was the way to go.

It actually took it falling apart for many to realize it had to be torn down.

The positive in all this is Shanahan has no sentimental ties to any of it. He took Leiweke’s instructions – to come in, evaluate and act – to heart, and coldly went about putting the entire operation on edge all year.

 

[TmlHockeyFan]

i agree
i wish there was a way to get McDavid without Babcock.

Babcock loves control and having the ability to coach McDavid from 18-27 is one he wouldn't give up IMO.

If we get McDavid, we sadly get Babcock too. I think he's a good coach but some people are overrating him greatly. We don't have good luck with hiring high profile people. I'd rather hire a low profile coach with player development skills during rebuild.

Let's worry about winning the lottery first before we worry about who's going to coach him.

 

[Kurisu]

anyone want to gif Shanahan with a flamethrower.

 

[CBinTokyo]

Let's worry about winning the lottery first before we worry about who's going to coach him.

Had to confirm I wasn't in the Buffalo thread by mistake...

 

[tooncesmeow]

Me neither. He's the worst captain I've seen in any NHL team, ever. Did some... weird stuff during this season already and before that too.

Will be great to see so many players and "captains" be gone during this summertime anthem as we are already firing all these very stupid coaches etc. Horachek doesn't understand the game correctly, not even the spirit of things evidently.

Really?

Cause like..Craig Rivet was a captain.. so was Filip Kuba..

 

[Choralone]

You guys keep your grubby paws off Mike Futa.

 

[rojac]

Babcock loves control and having the ability to coach McDavid from 18-27 is one he wouldn't give up IMO.

If we get McDavid, we sadly get Babcock too. I think he's a good coach but some people are overrating him greatly. We don't have good luck with hiring high profile people. I'd rather hire a low profile coach with player development skills during rebuild.

18-25. The qualification for being a free agent is 7 years or hitting age 27. If you come into the league at 18, you can become a free agent at 25.

 

[Future]

You guys keep your grubby paws off Mike Futa.

We just might have to steal him from you

 

[LaPlante94]

How can people say Babcock is overrated. Detroit has never missed the playoffs when he's coached. You can say he's had great teams, but these past 2 seasons that team has been young and they have made the playoffs when people have said they wouldn't. Datsyuk and Zetterberg were injured for quite a few games last season and people always called the there AHL teams name. He still coached that team to the playoffs and proved he could coach the young guys. I think Buffalo would be a good team for him to coach if he wants to leave Detroit because of all the really good young talent mixed with some decent veterans.

 

[bruins4thecup65]

Would you trade your first round pick for Chirelli?

 

[hockeywiz542]

According to Ed Willes of the Vancouver Province, if former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke lets events unfold naturally, if he builds through the draft rather than trading for Phil Kessel, the Leafs would have six years worth of prospects, including blue-chippers from 2010 and 2011, and they’d be well on their way. Instead, the Toronto Maple Leafs have this toxic waste spill to clean up.

Burke is an able hockey man whose work in Vancouver, Anaheim, and Calgary speaks for itself. But that error in judgment will end up crippling the Leafs for a decade.

http://www.faceoff.com/sports/hocke...es+Musings+arrived+parity/10966434/story.html

— In tearing the Toronto Maple Leafs down to the studs, Brendan Shanahan has finally charted the course Brian Burke wouldn’t and Dave Nonis couldn’t. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, the Leafs’ problems won’t be fixed by a vigorous house cleaning.

This all goes back to the Phil Kessel trade, which signalled Burke’s attempt to rebuild on the fly. That was six years ago. The payoff, such as it was, was the first-round playoff series with Boston that ended in the bitter Game 7 defeat. As for the downside, the Leafs will carry the staggering weight of Kessel’s and Dion Phaneuf’s contract into their rebuild and that only complicates the job before Shanahan and the new hockey department.

But go back to the Kessel trade prior to the 2009-10 season. If Burke lets events unfold naturally, if he builds through the draft, the Leafs would have six years worth of prospects, including blue-chippers from 2010 and 2011, and they’d be well on their way. Instead, they have this toxic waste spill to clean up.

Burke is an able hockey man whose work in Vancouver, Anaheim and Calgary speaks for itself. But that error in judgment will end up crippling the Leafs for a decade.

 

[WillNyeTheHockeyGuy]

anyone want to gif Shanahan with a flamethrower.

Not a gif, but I tried my best with my limited paint skills.

 

[hockeywiz542]

According to Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun, by the way Toronto Maple Leafs President Brendan Shanahan conducted himself this season, we’re assuming nothing that happened Sunday was either a quick call or overreaction. From the day he was hired, Shanahan has said little and watched a lot.

He hired some of his own people, hockey minds he can trust, to help with those observations. And Sunday’s actions confirm he was determined to go forward with those voices in all the most important places.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/12/maple-leafs-are-shannys-team-now

TORONTO - At 2 p.m. on Monday, Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan will make a rare public appearance at the Air Canada Centre and play the measured role of brazen chief executive.

Confident and no doubt impeccably dressed, he will surely discuss his vision of the future for the decimated hockey team, a group dramatically different from the one he took over little more than a year ago.

This is Shanahan’s team now perhaps we’ll get a glimpse as to where it is headed.

If Shanahan was ruthless on the ice during his Hall of Fame playing career, he has proven to be ruthless in the boardroom as well, a corporate killer getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit into his view of success.

Sunday’s carnage was as swift as it was sweeping. The jockstraps barely had time to dry following Saturday’s season finale against Montreal and Shanahan had purged just about every meaningful managerial and coaching position in the organization that wasn’t his own hire.

It has been fascinating to watch Shanahan in his first year on the job — not that there was much watching to do, really. The times he met with the media at large could be counted on one hand. Out of curiosity rather than complaint, midway through the season I asked a Leafs public relations staffer why his boss preferred that approach, especially in a city so starved for hockey information. The answer made some sense: How many CEOs talk about the day-to-day operations of their company, especially one going through serious and extensive transition?

Even with those he spoke to regularly, Shanahan has been guarded about his plans, which was probably an indication that Nonis’ days were numbered.

He knows and trusts one of his hires, Mark Hunter, who will share interim general manager duties with Kyle Dubas, Shanahan’s first major hire last summer.

With Nonis gone and other key hockey evaluators such as director of pro scouting Steve Kasper and director of player development Jim Hughes also sent packing, it is pretty much the Shanny show.

The scouting staff has also been shuffled, which could be seen as a peculiar move just two months before the NHL draft. But clearly the president has confidence in those he trusts, in particular Hunter and Dubas.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Would you trade your first round pick for Chirelli?

No since compensation is set at a 2nd or3rd depending on the time of year

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Now he has a TON of people to hire I wonder who replaces everybody

 

[hockeywiz542]