It is really hard to not look back differently at the Treliving era and agree with some that he was not a great GM for this franchise. 2 things he gets praised for in the media are 2 of his biggest errors. The first was the Bill Peters fiasco which many talked about how Treliving dealt with this was top notch and his communication and getting out in front of it was very well done. We all know he had blinders on and fired Gulutzan with the goal of hiring Peters. There was no coaching search and ultimately I doubt there was much vetting on Peters because Treliving enjoyed his time with him at the Worlds and that was all he needed.
The second is the summer of Brad and in some cases this was the situation I felt that really put him on the map for the Toronto media. The summer of Brad was the result of him fumbling the 2 top franchise players and a situation he created for himself. He had an opportunity to trade or extend Johnny the summer before he was a free agent but decided that the best course of action was to deal with this in free agency where Gaudreau gained all the leverage. The Gaudreau negotiations paralyzed the team through draft week where they lacked picks and we waited until the final hour before hearing Johnny wasn’t coming back.
With Tkachuk he gifted him all the leverage in the world with a high QO and one year to UFA status. There was a path to a 6 year deal out of ELC but the horrendous signing of Neal and the desire to keep Frolik limited the teams cap space. So Brad created the situation that he received praise for pivoting from. The Florida trade on paper was shockingly good value but it was 2 rental players that were coming. In order to avoid the same situation a year later the org decided to give them 8 year deals despite one being 30 and the other turning 30in year 1 of the deal. The fact the team gave up the extra first they acquired in the Tkachuk trade to move beloved player Sean Monahan to sign a 32 year old coming off a completely one off year to max term has screwed this franchise for more than a half decade moving forward.
When the plan to build around Gaudreau and Tkachuk failed the smart thing to do would of been telling Brad to dismantle to team and start a rebuild and then when his contract expired this past season just move on like both parties did. I would have trusted Brad to tear the team down but not build it back up. Conroy is getting that rookie GM treatment that seems to be difficult to make deals. At least Brad was established and could have left Craig a clean slate and ability to build this team in his own vision.
People can blame the owners but Brad is the guy who made these deals.
Poor coaching hires
A reliance on free agency to make changes to the team
Lack of a long term plan
All reasons why Treliving was a pretty crappy GM in hindsight. Some of you saw this years ago but for me it was the complete fumbling of our franchise players and relying on free agency and overpaying people to fill those holes as the final straw for me especially since we have had more than a year to see the dust settle on these moves.
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