Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving has been an NHL GM for 12 years now, and over that time, he has gained a reputation for being a very passive general manager. Moreover, he has a reputation for being easily exploited, as he rarely wins trades, and it seems many other GMs in the league do not respect him. Brad Treliving has already ruined one franchise that had a fantastic future in the Calgary Flames, and he is well on his way to ruining another in the Toronto Maple Leafs. Brad Treliving has one fatal flaw that makes him as bad a general manager as he is: waiting for things to come to him.
The David Kampf contract
When Treliving was first hired, he was immediately tasked with re-signing three key UFAs that the Leafs traded for at the deadline: Noel Acciari, Luke Schenn, and most importantly, Ryan O’Reilly. Treliving tried his best to get ROR to accept a contract that was fair, but he was very adamant about testing the free agent market.
Treliving waited until the very last second, hoping he would change his mind, but he didn’t. Out of panic, Tre would decide to sign Kampf (a 4th line centre) to a $2.4M x 4 contract out of fear that he wouldn’t be able to find a 3C for a good price in FA. That Kampf contract proved to be terrible; it was way too much for a guy who played average defence and scored five goals a year. On top of this, Pontus Holmberg had just signed a two-year league minimum deal, and he did everything Kampf did, but arguably better.
Waiting until the last second and then making panic moves has been a very common occurrence for Brad Treliving over his years as a GM.
The 2025 Trade Deadline
This trade deadline will end up going down as one of, if not the worst, deadlines in Toronto Maple Leafs history. The Leafs were hovering around first in their division all season and were in a prime position to make a deep playoff run. Despite this, there were still some glaring holes in the roster that even the average fan could identify. The Leafs were in trade rumours all year, heading up to the deadline. They badly needed a third-line centre and a top-pairing defenseman.
Days passed by with radio silence from the Leafs. Treliving was spending his time trying to flip Mitch Marner for Mikko Rantanen (this unfortunately did not work out) and was waiting for the price on Scott Laughton to drop. As he waited, all of the centres slowly dropped off the market until Treliving panicked and traded a first-round pick and prospect Nikita Grebenkin for Scott Laughton on deadline day. Trading these assets for a replacement-level player is bad on its own, but the fact that he was flipped for a measly 3rd-round pick exactly a year later makes it look much worse.
The disastrous Carlo trade
But Brad wasn’t done; he still had more assets to get rid of. After missing out on his main targets, Treliving made a last-minute move minutes before the deadline for 6’5 defender Brandon Carlo. He gave up Fraser Minten (about to put up 40+ points in his first full year) and a 2026 top-five protected pick. That draft pick has a very large chance of being anywhere between 6th and 11th overall, as the Leafs have had a disastrous season. Brandon Carlo has been below average defensively and hasn’t scored a goal for the Leafs, over a year after the trade. These two panic moves have ended up setting the franchise back multiple years.
Brad Marchand and the 2025 offseason
After losing to Florida in Game 7 of the second round, the Leafs were tasked with some very difficult decisions to make. Treliving knew that his franchise player, Mitch Marner, was leaving for nothing in free agency and had to replace him with very minimal assets. The Leafs reportedly had a chance to acquire JJ Peterka this offseason, with Brandon Carlo as part of the deal—but Treliving didn’t act.
Despite being (allegedly) able to acquire a young top-six forward that the team desperately needed, Treliving elected to wait until July 1st to sign Brad Marchand in free agency. Five days before free agency, the Utah Mammoth acquired Peterka, leaving the Leafs heavily reliant on Marchand being available. Unsurprisingly, Marchand re-signed with the Panthers, leaving a huge hole in the Leafs top-six that still exists today.
The 2026 Trade Deadline
The trade deadline this year was the most recent instance where Treliving waited and paid for it. Although it wasn’t as bad as last year, this year’s deadline was a huge failure for Treliving and the Leafs. Treliving waited as long as possible to commit to selling at the deadline, even though it was extremely evident that this team wasn’t close to the playoffs, let alone cup contention.
It wasn’t until the team forced his hand by losing five straight after the Olympic break that he decided to sell, but by then, he had lost a lot of valuable time. He spent the next few days waiting to trade his pending UFAs, Scott Laughton and Bobby McMann, convinced that contenders would panic and pay a premium price for them. He waited until the last few minutes before the deadline, and when no one could pay the high asking price, he had no choice but to sell the pending UFAs for a lacklustre price or let them leave for nothing.
He got a 2nd and 4th rounder for McMann, and a conditional 3rd round pick for Laughton, an extremely underwhelming return considering the prices that teams were paying for other players around the league. In addition, he waited to see if someone would pay his very high asking price for Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and when nobody did, he decided to just keep him. This will end up costing them, as OEL’s value is at an all-time high, and he will likely regress substantially next season.
The time to fire him was yesterday
Treliving has done an irreversible amount of damage in only three seasons as the Leafs general manager. His main weakness of being too passive has cost him greatly, and it will continue to cost him as long as he continues to manage the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs need to cut ties with Treliving before he does more damage than he has already done.
Declaring that a 2.4 mil x 4 contract is what killed the Leafs is ridiculous! Sure, it wasn’t the best but it’s kind of insignificant in the grand scheme. No, what killed the Leafs is Shanahan and Dubas!! Two people who had NO experience at what they were doing as well as a 3rd in Keefe. Holmberg was everywhere the puck wasn’t and when he got the puck, it died on his stick. Kampf was everywhere he should be but the puck also died on his stick. They were both useless, although Kampf, at least had some special skills not mentioned here for the purpose of making an incorrect point! Treliving got rid of both. Both weren’t anywhere near the main problem on the Leafs. Them gone and others in has not produced more. Nobody could have known that Laughton would take the rest of the year and 2 months of the next season to finally wake up and start contributing to his new team. However, it did seem like an overpayment and surely Carlo was a huge overpayment. Being realistic instead of this article’s embellishments, the throwing away of 2 firsts and more by Treliving on Laughton and Carlo should be enough to have him gone. If these two had worked out better this season then maybe not but the pay for Laughton was as a 3C and he’s been a 4C the entire time while Carlo has been no better than a 2nd to 3rd pairing with size of 6’5″ and 227 lbs who plays like 5’8″ and 160 lbs! Myself and probably most Leafs fans feel that if the Leafs need Marchand then they should cheer for another team! So, instead of waiting Treliving should have settled for worse offer then this article would be complaining about that. There is NO information to suggest anyone could have done better this deadline. Trading 3 lineup players at once is ENOUGH and they were the right players. What a load of hogwash about the deadline that’s unworthy of a response!