Maple Leafs management on Woll’s future, playoff injuries and coaching search

Change is coming to the Toronto Maple Leafs. 

After a Friday press conference held by team management, delayed to allow for the first of those changes to drop — the firing of head coach Sheldon Keefe earlier this week — of that much, we can be sure. But with another Maple Leafs campaign lost, relegated to being simply another in a growing sum of post-season disappointments, the question now is what changes will be made, exactly. How significant the surgery will be on this annually underwhelming machine.

Taking to the podium Friday, the three central decision-makers now at the helm of this project — Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment president and CEO Keith Pelley, Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving, and team president Brendan Shanahan — offered the blue-and-white faithful a familiar cadre of off-season slogans: They will assess and evaluate, they won’t rush the process, they’re here to win.

Still, the trio did reveal some clues as to the direction the franchise intends to go this off-season, and beyond. As the club’s search for solutions gets underway, here’s a closer look at the key takeaways from the team’s address Friday.

WOLL REMAINS A KEY PART OF TORONTO’S GOALTENDING PLANS

The 2024 post-season served as something of a microcosm of netminder Joseph Woll’s Maple Leafs tenure: When the 25-year-old was in the cage, he was exceptional, but in the end, injuries prevented him from being in the crease for the most important game of the season.

It wasn’t the first time injuries have held Woll back from reaching his full potential. A third-overall pick who’s impressed in the AHL and NHL on numerous occasions — and, for a spell, took over as the big club’s No. 1 option this season — Woll’s injury history has some among the Leafs faithful questioning whether he can be relied upon as the team’s starter moving forward.

On Friday, Treliving suggested the club still sees Woll — who has one year remaining on his current deal, set to pay him $775,000 next season — as the club’s starting netminder heading into next season.

“As far as our goaltending, I’ve got faith in Joe,” the general manager said. “Now, like everybody else, there are questions. The biggest question with Joe is he’s gotten injured a lot. We have to dig into that. Sometimes that happens, sometimes bad luck happens. Is there a training issue that we have to deal with? Do we need to change something in his off-ice routine? All those things are what we have to dig into.”

As for impending UFA Ilya Samsonov — who struggled this season after a standout debut in Toronto a year prior, but ultimately wound up as the club’s No. 1 again due to Woll’s injuries — Treliving stopped short of throwing his support behind the 27-year-old returning.

“I believe in Joe as a goaltender. We have to support Joe,” Treliving said. “Ilya’s contract is up, but we certainly have to try to put ourselves in a position where we don’t have the second-best goaltender in each of these series.”

While there may not be many signficiant changes in net, both Treliving and Shanahan suggested Friday that more crucial alterations could be coming to the Maple Leafs core. With Auston Matthews and William Nylander on the cusp of the first seasons of their recently-signed extensions, all focus has shifted to Mitch Marner and John Tavares, who will count a combined $21.9 million against the cap next season, before becoming UFA’s themselves.

“I believe that there are times where you talk about patience, and I still believe that there are times when patience is the suitable call. However, when you see patterns persist and the results don’t change, you have to adjust the way that you think about things,” Shanahan said Friday. “We will look at everything this summer, and we will consider everything this summer. All with the intention of the one thing that we are here for, which is to make the Maple Leafs better, and to win.”

That said, Treliving made clear that making drastic changes to the club’s lineup won’t be a simple process.

“We’ve got really good players. But it hasn’t worked,” he said. “You can have the viewpoint and say, ‘We’ve invested in four players, we’ve got X amount of our salary cap tied up there, and if we spread it all around we’re going to have more depth,’ all these types of things — we are where we are, okay? This is the situation we’re in right now. Those are really good players. 

“We’ve got to dig into why we’re ending up with the same result year after year after year, and adjust accordingly.”

TRELIVING SHEDS LIGHT ON ILLNESS, INJURY THAT SIDELINED MATTHEWS

Among the familiar issues that have consistently led to the Maple Leafs’ playoff downfall — a sputtering post-season offence and an ineffective post-season power play — key injuries made matters much worse for the club this time around, with Matthews, Nylander and Woll all missing significant time over the course of the seven-game series.

While the club made a point to keep details of said injuries quiet while the series was ongoing, Treliving revealed the details Friday:

Of Matthews, the GM said a potential head injury was the cause of No. 34’s absence from the lineup: “After Game 2, Auston became real sick. Our initial thought, with as sick as he was, was that it was food poisoning of some description. It was a virus that stuck with him throughout Game 3. He suffered a hit in Game 4 — and we don’t know if it was a combination of the sickness, the hit — but he was presenting head injury issues. So, we pulled him, and we weren’t going to clear him until those things cleared, which they did on the afternoon of Game 7.”

As for Woll, it was a back injury that took him out of the lineup ahead of Game 7: “Joe Woll suffered an SI joint sprain, a sprained back, at the completion of Game 6, which made him unavailable for Game 7.”

Bobby McMann, who came alive for the Leafs down the home stretch of the regular season but wound up sidelined in the final few games of the campaign, missing the playoffs entirely, was dealing with a knee injury: “Bobby McMann suffered an MCL sprain during the home game against Detroit. … If the team had made it to the second round, McMann would have been available.”

Treliving added that depth forward Connor Dewar underwent shoulder surgery Friday, and is expected back in time for training camp.

PELLEY EXPLAINS RATIONALE FOR KEEPING SHANAHAN AS TEAM PRESIDENT

In the wake of Toronto’s Game 7 loss six days ago, speculation has swirled regarding the future of the decision-makers who have overseen the past near-decade of disappointment. With longtime GM Kyle Dubas ousted from the organization last year, and Keefe’s tenure coming to an end this week, all eyes shifted to Shanahan, who’s led this Maple Leafs project since 2014.

While many among the fanbase questioned whether Shanahan, too, should be removed from his position given the continued string of underwhelming playoff performances, the club president was on hand Friday to once again speak about the team’s plans moving forward.

According to Pelley, who began his tenure as president and CEO of MLSE four weeks ago, it was Shanahan’s history of success over the entirety of his big-league career, and his connection with Treliving, that allowed him to remain.

“Brendan Shanahan is the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s a champion. He’s a three-time Cup winner,” Pelley said Friday. “What I saw in my four weeks with the two gentlemen beside me showed me that chemistry and unity is being built at the highest levels.”

Later comments from Shanahan himself hinted at further reasoning for him remaining as part of the Maple Leafs brain trust, as his history with the team’s current core may be useful in evaluating how to alter it moving forward.

“Brad and Keith are relatively new here, but I am not,” Shanahan said. “And I have seen some of these things over the years. I do believe there’s a time for preaching patience, and I do believe there’s a time where you have to examine some of the patterns that persist. So, everything will be on the table.”

Asked about his contract status, and whether he’s entering the final season of his current deal, as has been reported, Shanahan said simply it will not be a distraction for the team.

“I’m not going to get into the details of my contract. … It’s not a focus for me,” he said. “My last contract with the Maple Leafs was not addressed or renewed until a month before it expired — it was not a distraction to me then, and my contract status will not be a distraction to me or the team now.”

TRELIVING SAYS TEAM WILL NOT RUSH SEARCH FOR NEW HEAD COACH

Before any changes are made to the roster that Toronto will send over the boards come 2024-25, a decision must first be made on the coach that will lead them. 

In the wake of Keefe’s dismissal earlier this week, a number of candidates have been floated — top among those options seems to be former St. Louis Blues coach Craig Berube. However, with multiple NHL clubs sitting with vacant head coaching positions, the pressure is on for Treliving and Co. to make a move sooner than later, to avoid missing out on their preferred choice.

Speaking of the coaching search Friday, though, the general manager said the team must balance acting quickly with doing their due diligence.

“Listen, there are some good coaching candidates out there. We intend to explore them. I’m not going to get into specific individuals,” Treliving said Friday. “As far as the timeline, we want to be thorough, but we also understand there are other openings.” 

Treliving also noted that the club’s coaching-search process began only Thursday, with the team’s focus having been on the post-season and Keefe’s future.

“I didn’t want to make emotional decisions, and it’s been emotional — it still is. I wanted to deal with Sheldon properly, and really be clear and think that process through, spend some quality time with him, and then once that decision was made, get onto the next step. We began that yesterday,” he said. “We’re not waiting, we’re going to be thorough — this isn’t something that’s going to be hastily done. But we certainly know that there are some quality candidates out there, and we want to get to them as fast as we possibly can.”

While team management didn’t offer any further information on the kind of coach they will be seeking out, Shanahan did speak to what he felt were key flaws in the way his team played this past season, hinting at what the club needs moving forward.

“There are regular-season goals and then there are playoff goals, and I’m a firm believer that sometimes playoff goals come from playoff structure and defensive structure, limiting opportunities against, forcing teams to open things up against you,” Shanahan said while speaking of Toronto’s continued offensive struggles in the post-season. “It’s a question of coaching, it’s a question of messaging, and it’s also a question of personnel. When the playoffs come, we don’t get the goals that we’ve been getting in the regular season, so how do we change that?”

“It isn’t total goals, it’s how the goals are scored in the playoffs,” Treliving added. “You score differently in the playoffs than you do in the regular season. So, is it systematic? Is it personnel? It’s more difficult, you’re defended harder, you’re played against harder in the playoffs. 

“We haven’t scored enough, our special teams haven’t been good enough, and we seem to be turning the other team’s goalie into the first star every night. So, I think it’s twofold. We’ve got to find a way — systematically, personnel-wise — to find a way to score more in the playoffs, and score those goals that are scored in the playoffs.”

In terms of how personnel decisions figure into that equation, Shanahan added the club’s next head coach will “have an important voice” in conversations of what needs to be done with the team’s current core.

PELLEY LAYS OUT HIS VISION, OWNERSHIP’S FOCUS FOR MAPLE LEAFS

Friday’s press conference also marked the first team address from Pelley since assuming his role at the helm of MLSE and the Maple Leafs in early April.

While he offered praise for Shanahan and Treliving, and for the potential of this current group finding success moving forward, Pelley made clear his position that the team has underperformed, and improvement in 2024-25 is a must.

“Good is simply not good enough. I can assure you that is the collective position of ownership,” Pelley said Friday. “When I asked during the interview stage what was the definition of success to the owners, one of them said, immediately and emphatically: ‘Just win.’”

While Pelley stopped short of putting a timeline on this current group lifting the Stanley Cup, he maintained that the organization is focused on bringing a championship to Toronto.

“I’ve always believed that the formula for success is great skill combined with chemistry and unity,” he said. “In the midst of facing adversity in the first series, down 3-1, I got a full glimpse of the chemistry and unity that Brad and Brendan have. … Skill, chemistry and unity are what I believe the recipe for success is. And for me, ‘success’ is winning the Stanley Cup. Nothing else matters.

“There’s no complacency. We’re not here to sell jerseys — we’re here to win. And we’re going to do everything we possibly can to do that.”