It’s expected that the Leafs will call a press conference tomorrow to announce the hiring of John Chayka as the next GM and Mats Sundin as the Vice President of Hockey Operations.
I have to say, of all the bad decisions that Keith Pelley and the organization could have made, this is among the worst.
There is a lot of to run through in terms of how this decisions was made and I honestly can’t add anything to it. In short it looks like this:
- Tie Domi’s greatest quality is making friends with people in positions of influence. He and Mats Sundin and said to be very close friends dating back to when Sundin was captain of the team and have remained that way, even to this day.
- You can add John Chayka to Domi’s list of friends, as Chayka apparently helped Max Domi when the Leafs forward was playing hockey at the junior level and was trying to figure out how to live with and play through diabetes. During that time John and Tie became close.
- Another addition to Domi’s close friends list is now Keith Pelley.
- The organization hired a search firm to compile a list of viable candidates for their vacant GM and/or President of Hockey Operations positions, but it appears as though those selections were ultimately turned down in favour of Domi’s own selections.
- Scott White, the long time assistant GM in Dallas and, when you dive deeply into his career, the most experienced GM available in the NHL that has never been an actual GM, has yet to be told that he’s out of the running. However, it sounds as if he was a back-up option at this point. Someway, somehow, the hiring of Mats Sundin coincided with the hiring of John Chayka. It’s believed that if Sundin didn’t sign on for a major role in the organization, White would have landed the GM role.
- The Leafs asked for permission to speak to Tampa Bay Lightning GM, Julien Brisebois, but they were denied the option.
- It’s expected that Tie Domi and Gary Roberts will have roles with the organization as well. Roberts will be a welcome sight around the team. That’s all I’m going to say on this one.
My opinion on John Chayka is in line with everything you’ve read and heard up to this point. He didn’t do anything spectacular in Phoenix when he was their GM, but he was also in a very undesirable situation. His hands were tied in terms of what he could spend and the moves he could make. His trades were average at best, his drafting was poor and his signings didn’t exactly blow you away. It was a poor organization that simply didn’t have the tools to be successful.
Toronto will give him the tools to be successful, but really, what has he done that would make you choose him? That’s the question that everyone is asking.
The only positive thing I have heard about Mats Sundin is that he has “strong opinions” on what the Leafs should do to right the ship. He also believes that there is no pride in the jersey at this time and I 100% believe that to be true. The pride for these players comes in the form of signing a bigger contract than your friends (it was reported that Nylander wanted more money than Boston Bruins forward, David Pastrnak. The pair are good friends), not in the form of doing what is right by the jersey and the organization.
At first glance that would make me believe that Sundin would be willing to ask Matthews and/or Nylander to play elsewhere, if that’s what was right for the organization. However, it’s since been reported that a pre-requisite for any potential hire was keeping those two players in the fold. If somebody walked in and said that moving the teams star players would be a necessary evil, they simply weren’t in consideration for the job.
At the end of the day we have a team that is no different than any other. Except instead of having a meddling owner, this team has a meddling board that simply wants players that sell tickets and jerseys.
I’ll hope that I’m wrong about all of this, but it appears that we should brace ourselves for a long, bumpy road ahead. The front office is directionless and leaderless, the team on the ice is poor and the coaching staff has yet to even be discussed. Everyone is already calling this a failure and a disaster before the team has even hired the people they are rumoured to want to hire and I can’t say I disagree with them.