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Johnson on the Maple Leafs' team direction, rebuild potential and Treliving's roster outlook
30 Jan 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Mike Johnson, our TSN hockey analyst, joining us here on the Maple Toyota Hotline. Sorry to make you wait there, Johnny, but I wanted to give Jonas the floor there. What is your understanding of the Leafs, you know, this year, the way they operate compared to past years?
I was fascinated to listen. No problem, boys. Happy to listen along. I have no idea. I have no idea about their sports science department and who runs and who's got the authority. I don't know if there's an idea that's about true living and brew bait. wanted to eliminate some of the science behind the decision-making and want to go by their gut or more traditional measures. I have no idea.
I think the only thing I would say, and Jonas noodles, he talked about it. Hey, it's, I'm aware that even the Maple Leafs, for all their value, they are still a business. If you own the business, you don't want to waste money. You don't want to spend millions and millions of dollars. You don't have to.
But if you're looking at the way that the Toronto Maple Leafs can have a competitive advantage in their industry. it is not with the money they can spend on players. That's not a competitive advantage to them. It's the money they can spend on other things.
And so whether it's sports science, whether it's the chefs that they have, whether it's the training facility, whether it's the plane, whether it's the hotel, whether it's the masseuse, whether it's whatever, That to me should be a continual area of evaluation and refinement where the tournament was like, okay, we're not looking at waste money. I own the team.
I'm not looking at waste money, but how can we give our team everything? And also maybe something other teams don't have as good as, and it might be incremental. 1% might be half a percent. It might not matter this year. It might matter next year. But if you believe it matters, then that's things that they should spend money on. And that doesn't mean bloated.
Noodles talks about the traveling circus, like people everywhere, a trillion. But the people that matter, that can make a difference in your competitive success on the ice, they should not be outbid or out-resourced for anything.
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Chapter 2: What is the current direction of the Maple Leafs this season?
Right. Well, and now when you consider where they are in this cycle of things, the belief was, okay, you use all these resources to get you to the top. They're close to the bottom right now, but the resources are still very valuable and need to be utilized here for them to get back into a position to succeed. and it's pro scouting, it's amateur scouting. I don't know where things stand on that.
Not that I would expect every year there's some State of the Union from the Leafs, like this is who we've hired, this is what we have, this is where people are. But as you know, Johnny, you're following. I mean, the games, the individual games... are losing meaning because they're 10 points out and it's ugly. We'll break down the games. We're talking about players, of course.
But the scope is starting to expand. It's becoming more of a big-picture conversation.
Chapter 3: How does sports science influence player performance for the Maple Leafs?
What do they do? How do they get out of this? And they've got to be crafty. They've got to be creative, crafty, and they've got to win. They've got to find some guys like Diamonds in the Rough. They're long overdue for that. I don't know how they're going to do it, but... That's got to be the expectation, doesn't it, Johnny?
They've got to find some young guys that can step in and play over the next couple of years that maybe other teams don't see the value in.
I feel like that's a lot of pro scouting, amateur scouting, player development, right? Whether it's college free agents, whether it's European free agents, whether it's other guys in organizations that you believe you can extract more value from, that you see something that they don't. Yeah, 100%.
The focus of this organization today, of course, it's on the games and tomorrow night and three and four and all the rest. But it's really for them to get to where they're trying to go, which for the last seven years, to their credit, it has been about trying to win that year. And they've been close enough to warrant that conversation. We can debate how close they have been.
But it's been the focus and it should have been the focus. Not so much anymore. Now it's about, okay, what do we do with this team? How do we get it moving forward? And Hayes, to your point, how do we find some ways to win some transactions? Like that's what they got to do. And then be, you know, good with what they decide to do and the assets they acquire and how they manipulate it all around.
Yeah, that's a jigsaw puzzle that is extraordinarily complex. But that's what the people who have that job, Brad Tree living in his group, all of them, that's their job right now. And their job is as important as it has ever been to make the Leafs not be in this situation next year. A lot of talk lately about rebuild, Prong saying take it down to the studs and all the rest of it.
And, you know, the idea sort of taking it down to the studs would be to what? Get a franchise player to get elite-level talent. Like, taking it to the studs is not going to get them a player better than William Elander or a player better than Austin Matthews. You would take it down to the studs and hope you get three years of Austin Matthews.
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Chapter 4: What are Brad Treliving's strategies for the Maple Leafs' roster?
Like, they already have the thing that you get it to the studs for, which is like the super high-end players. You can dump Matthew Nise in there as a really good player. It's all the other stuff that they have sort of ā You know, they've missed on some, they've aged on some, they've injured on some, and it's all sort of chipped away of what they were supposed to be this year.
And they have to find a way to get that all back to where they think can surround those core pieces and be a better team next year. So, Johnny, where do you start? I mean, if you're Keith Pelley, do you decide, okay, this is the group that I want to make these decisions moving forward? Do you think that first and foremost you go, Tree's my guy?
I don't know if you have to come out and say it, but you just go, we need to do this. Tree, you're the guy who's going to execute it. Chief, you're the guy who's going to coach it. Do you think it starts there, or where do you think they start and move on from there? If I'm Keith Pelley, I sit down and have a meeting with Brad Trueliving. What's your vision of the future of the team?
And I hear it. And then if I believe in it, okay, how do you make that happen? And I hear it and I believe in it, but he's my guy. I don't know if I need to say he's my guy. I've already said he's my guy. But if he's not or he doesn't have the vision that I think we should go on and I'm the ultimate boss, then I would change that guy.
And then whoever, whether it's Bradtree Living or whoever that next guy might be, again, if I'm running the team, now I take that vision and where we're headed. And that vision includes like how we play and what our style is and X's and O's. And I go to Craig Berube and I talk to him. Okay, this is how we play. How do you think we should play? If I agree, Craig Berube is still the coach.
If I disagree or the new GM or the old GM, if he's still there, disagrees, then it's a different coach. Like I think that like the world as the least have known it for the last nine years, which has been a great run. I think I read somewhere in the last nine years, they have the third most wins in the regular season.
They've been a model franchise, incredibly successful without playoff success, okay? That's well established. They're not that team right now. They want to get back to that team, but they're not that team right now. So I have that evaluation noodles. GM, okay, yes, no. Coach, again, yes, no. And then have a vision where we're going, what we look like, how we get there.
And I also want to say, like, how we play... When we get there, like, I don't, you know, what style are we going to have with this new vision that we're going to go forward with? And what's that going to look like? And, and I think that's the conversation you start with.
And then you do that like now, because you have to make decisions in the next week, in the next five weeks to make sure that you start down that road, all on the same page. So, Mike, I think you've identified one of the tricky challenges with the way that they're set up. The person asking those questions is Keith Pelley.
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