Leafs fire Sheldon Keefe

[Invictus]

I would agree. He strikes me as a smart corporate guy. Says the
Right things to the press which means hes smart enough to say the right thing to MLSE. Can’t speak for what he does hockey wise other than I know he has veto power on trades.

I personally think his role is redundant. Theres no need for an MLSE CEO, president of hockey ops and a GM. It’s pretty ridiculous but when you have as much money as MLSE you can spend like it’s nothing. They just re-signed and then fired Keefe before his new contract even kicked in. Drop in the bucket for these guys and their financial owners.

All the positions are there so it's harder for someone to pinpoint where a problem is.

[Pengwin7]

Is it possible that Shanny is purely political, and not very astute when it comes to hockey decisions? I mean not all former NHLers make good GMs or hockey-focused execs.

Personally - having played quite a lot of hockey in my life... (from youth-age to now/almost50)....
Wingers are typically - by far - the least hockey-smart of the lot of hockey people - positionally.

If I had to pick people for general hockey-smarts:
1. Former defensemen
2. Former centers
3. Former goalies (*goalies are the biggest "range" - I've met absolute brilliant guys in net... and absolute dummies... crazy)
...
4. Analytics gurus
...
5. Former wingers
...


Maybe Shanahan is OK-smart... IDK... but I've never met a high-hockey-IQ winger during my lifetime.

Wingers - I've found - often have the highest SKILL:SMART ratio of all positions... and that's why they end up on wing - because it translates best there.
Making a dumb mistake can be covered by all the other positions... if you are on wing.
[not saying ALL wingers are dumber than every guy at ever other position... but I think if there was a Hockey-Wonderlic of sorts... I think this is how it would play out - list above.]


And part of the issue here is... Who hires Shanahan? (or a winger of any sort?)
Do they - themselves - have the hockey smarts to know if this guy is brilliant... or not?

If you have an owner rep (MLSE) - they probably don't have deep hockey smarts themselves... so how are they supposed to "know" or "not know" what Shanahan is?
I'd hope that these places have hiring-consultants... you know... just a 85 year old Scotty-Bowman-type would be enough to sit during interviews and say "This guy gets it all - he'll pick smart people under him".
IDK...

Shanny always shocked me as a strange hire for an upper position in the hockey world.
I watched him a lot as a teenager - and thought he was just a very skillful player...

[2014olympicgold]

Shanahan in 2009 became NHL's Vice President of Hockey and business development. Then in 2011 he took over the NHL Seniors VP role (from Colin Campbell). He started the "here's the video and explanation of why the NHL is suspending a player" including narrating the videos. He was in that role for a while (I think till 2014).

Shanahan was hired by the Leafs based off his time working for the NHL. His work with the NHL was about being an innovator of sorts expanding the NHLs "fun" in developing young players. His plan of "scorched earth" was huge. It was a bold move too, considering Toronto had never done such a thing.

The above is just more of an outline of wht Shanahan did prior to Toronto, just information.

Oh and the person who is responsible for hiring Shanahan was Tim Leiweke, who pretty much as soon as he hired Shanahan, announced he was leaving MLSE and officially left in 2015 (wanted to be an entrepreneur). The MLSE board knew his stay in MLSE would be short fwiw

[Pengwin7]

Leiweke is a Trump-style businessmen.
(He was a key name involved in the SEA expansion.)
I don't love these types.
Part of the old-guard of rich, white men bandy-ing about flexing their guts and their wallets.

They basically tell owners "Spend every penny you have. The people will come. You'll be successful."
It's the easiest thing in the world to do: Tell other people how to be.

He worked it in previous sports. NBA-TOR and MLS-TOR did quite well! (Gotta give Leiweke some props there)
Some successes... but also some fails/losses - not every owner wants to hear you say Spend/Spend/Spend...
https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/...ng-it-his-way/

Businessmen - (like Trump, who says) - feel like if they hire the right people - everything will go well.
But how does any businessman know "hockey"?
Answer: They don't. Pretty much all big-level businessmen don't know shit about hockey.
So hiring that very first guy down to top the "hockey management"... it's a very possible miss.


It happened in Atlanta with the Thrashers.
The ownership group (who I know a few of through 2nd/3rd contacts) are good old southern boys that.didn't.know.ANYthing.about.hockey.
ANYTHING.

And it failed.
Which is crazy since the GM (Waddell, *cough* former defenseman *cough*) has done fine in Carolina.
Maybe a different set of rules to live by. IDK.

Anyways - Shanahan is the wrong guy. Dubas was the wrong guy.
Treliving, is a former Defenceman. So I trust in him as a hire for TOR GM... probably first good move Shanahan has made with TOR.

I'm super curious on next coach coming in... and how much TOR/Shanny let Treliving mess with current roster.
All those NMCs though... yeesh, tough.

[rataylor22]

The one thing everyone says about the Leafs (myself included) is their D and goaltending is sketchy. That was not the case here. Their defensive play and goaltending is what kept them in the series as long as they did. Their PP was terrible and that really sunk them. Matthews missing games, Nylander missing games, both really hurt them.

I thought it was the best I'd seen the Leafs play in the playoffs in quite some time.

The Leafs secondary offense has been their problem for 3+ seasons or more. Everyone always blame the defense because of the Core4, but the problem has obviously been offense for years. Maybe people are starting to come around to that. Secondary offense can be a lot of things - better bottom 6, better puck moving D, etc. The Leafs have constantly tried to build an "all defense" team around the core 4, and they've largely succeeded, that is just not the type of team that wins in the playoffs. You need to rely on more than just a few forwards to generate offense.

The best teams are built from the back end out. Toronto is built from the front end. They have refused, for whatever reason, to draft and develop high end defensemen. Morgan Reilly is the rare exception to that and what do you know, he's their best Dman and the rest are scraps. They have invested their early draft picks (what they managed to keep) in forwards year after year after year. The odd time the DID draft a Dman, he either did not pan out or he was traded away.

Until this team has a different draft philosophy in regards to how to build this team, I do not see them as serious SC contenders.

That's not a coaching problem that Keefe can do anything about, but it still affects the coach in the end.

I am quoting Axe, but that's just because this is the best laid out post to quote. I think lots of people think this but it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

The Leafs have made 71 draft picks since 2014. 34% have been defencemen. 37% of their round 1-3 picks have been D. 36% of their round 1-4 picks have been D. 29% of their first round picks have been D, and you can choose maybe 1 year to question the pick.

2014 - Nylander. No worthwhile D selected around him
2015 - Marner. This one you can argue, with Hanifin, Provorov, and Werenski all on the board. I think the only one you'd rather have than Marner is Hanifin, and that is maybe only true this offseason. Prior to this season, it's Marner by a landslide
2016 - Matthews. Enough said.
2017 - Liljegren. D.
2018 - Sandin. D.
2019 - Traded for Muzzin. D.
2020 - Amirov. Guess you could have taken Guhle or Schneider but neither of those D move the needle much.
2021 - Traded for Foligno.
2022 - Traded to Dump Mrazek.
2023 - Easton Cowan

They have also traded 1st or 2nds for McCabe, Giordano, Lyubushkin x 2.

They definitely have repeatedly chosen the wrong D. But it's not really true that they haven't invested in the position.

[blayze]

Berube the overwhelming fav to replace Keefe. Perception seems to be he’s the right guy to “toughen” them up. Don’t know much about him bit def would avoid McLellan who excels in regular season and chokes in the playoffs (in other words he would fit right in).

Craig Berube -125
Todd McLellan +150
Any other coach +300
Gerard Gallant +800

[Pengwin7]

Just for fun:
(video is 1989 fight btw Berube & Shanahan. Because it's a fight it's "age restricted"... but it's just a hockey fight.)

[Godin]

Berube took St Louis from last place in the standings on Jan 3, 2019, to Stanley Cup champs in June. I'm not saying this would translate in the same fashion for Toronto, but he is a qualified playoff coach. Something Keefe is not.

[blayze]

If it's between Berube vs all the other dinosaur names I'm hearing then I take him in a heartbeat.

I hear Keefe is going to NJD... that was fast.

[tweetdrivr]

2020 - Amirov. Guess you could have taken Guhle or Schneider but neither of those D move the needle much.

Guhle doesn’t move the needle. Ok dude. This is one of worst takes I’ve seen on here in a while. Remember that time we argued about Hanafin’s top pair/PP potential and you said he didn’t move the needle either? Good times. Keep that stellar analysis coming.

[ross10019]

Guhle doesn’t move the needle. Ok dude. This is one of worse takes I’ve seen on here in a while. Remember that time we argued about Hanafin’s top pair/PP potential and you said he didn’t move the needle either? Good times. Keeep that stellar analysis coming.

Guhle is going to be moving lots of needles, to Leafs fan chagrin, over next 10-12 years or so!

[Feenom]

Guhle is going to be moving lots of needles, to Leafs fan chagrin, over next 10-12 years or so!

So haunting that he should change the spelling to Ghoul.

[rataylor22]

Guhle doesn’t move the needle. Ok dude. This is one of worst takes I’ve seen on here in a while. Remember that time we argued about Hanafin’s top pair/PP potential and you said he didn’t move the needle either? Good times. Keep that stellar analysis coming.

*Looks at Montreal's record this year*

Yes I'm comfortable that Guhle would not have moved the needle on this Leafs team.

Have we been provided evidence that Hanifin is a top pair/top PP D? Calgary tried to use him that way and their PP sucked. Vegas tried to use him that way and their PP was largely ineffective and arguably cost them the Dallas series. Did Vegas' results tangibly change after acquiring Hanifin? I believe they dropped in the standings after his acquisition.

[RizzeeDizzee]

Guhle doesn’t move the needle. Ok dude. This is one of worst takes I’ve seen on here in a while. Remember that time we argued about Hanafin’s top pair/PP potential and you said he didn’t move the needle either? Good times. Keep that stellar analysis coming.

Not that you need more ammo, but no defenseman in the entire NHL has both more total PP time and a higher PPPt/60 minutes this playoffs than Hanifin.

[2014olympicgold]

Not that you need more ammo, but no defenseman in the entire NHL has both more total PP time and a higher PPPt/60 minutes this playoffs than Hanifin.

Not to knit pick, but Hanifin only has 13min of PP time, and even if you take that in a per game stance, it's not the most/game. But his PPP/60min is the highest. Bouchard has the highest PP TOI

Hanifin has 13.0min of PP time this playoffs and 3ppp (7gp). So his PPP/60min would be 13.85PPP/60min

Bouchard has 36.7min of PP time this playoffs and 7ppp (9gp). So his PPP/60min would be 11.44PPP/60min