OverDrive - Treliving on the Maple Leafs' free agency priorities, Marner's departure from Toronto and improving the roster

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the Maple Leafs' free agency, the additions to the team on the lineup, the departure of Mitch Marner and the lack of engagement with Marner's team, the improvement of the DNA on the roster, upgrading the forward lines, the future outlook in Toronto and more.

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Stream now online on your smart speaker and on the free iHeart radio app Here's the GM of the may police brad tree living. How you doing brad? I'm doing good. How'd you guys grind through the day? Well, we're waiting for you to do something I mean, I guess you signed posetta, but what did you do all day? I guess I think that's what leaf fans want to hear But what did you do all day? I think that's what Leaf fans want to hear. Yeah, well first off, I think I just jumped on when you guys were mentioning at the end there about Bobby Mack. And I remember, Bob's one of the first media guys I remember covering the business full time and his draft coverage was legendary. I remember when he was writing for the hockey news. And he had a way better set of hair.

That was quite a set of hair he had back in the day on those draft coverages. So just congratulations on a Hall of Fame career to the best that ever did it. So to Bobby Mack, congratulations. Yes, absolutely. It was as far as I mean, it, you know, today was it was it was as busy as it normally is. You know, we went in today, obviously with Mitch leaving, our focus was trying to really focus at the top of our lineup. And there was, it wasn't what I would call a large list of guys that would fit.

You're not replacing Mitch necessarily and saying, okay, Mitch is gone, you're going to get one guy to go do it. We've tried to do some things to make up for some of the things that Mitch does. Um, but we spent our time on, um, players that we felt would, would be a good fit there and, and really trying to keep, you know, instead of, instead of racing out and, and signing a guy here and there, and all of a sudden our cap space gets eaten up.

We were trying to fish for somebody that could fit into our top six. As of now, haven't been able to do that. The rest of the gang was looking at some depth, really some depth signings for our roster and that's really taken up the bulk of the day, talking teams on trade opportunities so that's been that's been the bulk of the day. Trey do you feel like you have the luxury of time and also now some flexibility with your cap situation where you can like you say start to chip away at the market and take your time to you know build your team out in the absence of Mitch because

again, you don't drop the puck till October. So everything didn't have to be sorted out today. That was one of the things that I tried to get out there when we were talking today in our conversations is teams don't have to submit their list and submit everything today. So you feel like you've got some time with some patients here? Well, certainly have time. I mean, today represents there's, you know, depending on what you're looking for, there's a handful of those players are going to come off the board today.

Right. That that are gone. So the list obviously gets a lot shorter. And depending on what you're looking for, you know, the the free agent market, if you will, in terms of finding the right fit probably comes a little bit shorter. So you're looking at the trade, you know, trade scenarios and the like. But so yeah, we've got time, but certainly you feel it's an interesting market right now, because as in years past with the raising cap, you've seen guys and it'll take a day or so to flush everything out.

Once all the signings come on the board to where everybody usually takes a step back to see where they're at and what opportunities may be out there for us. But with the cap rising, one of the things that we talked about even going back in January is the probability of teams signing their own players, in my opinion, increased this year than really the last, it seems like a long time, but really since we ran into the flat cap, you know, through COVID, where guys had money to retain their players if they so choose. And so you saw a lot of that really leading up to today

and even before the bell went off of a lot of people retaining their players, left fewer players on the market. And one of the And you always want to feel like you've addressed needs coming out of free agency or today. Because as I said, the list gets a little bit smaller, but what we didn't want to do is just sign people to duplicate what we have here.

And so we've got some flex you know, we've got some flexibilities that relates to the cap, but you're always looking to, I always would rather have players. So we'll see how that continues to work itself out in the coming days. Well, you nailed it. The, you know, consistent theme leading up to free agency was that teams just kept their players. Yeah. You know, and obviously you did that with John Tavares, but the most prominent free agent chose not to do that. And that of course would be Mitch Marner.

You know, Marner obviously ended up wanting to go to Vegas. And I'm curious if you can take us through the timeline here, Brad, in terms of when it became clear to you and your staff that Mitch did not want to be a Maple Leaf anymore? I don't know if there's an aha moment, Brian. You know, really over the course of the last, you know, last year I guess when we were able to sign him we went to his camp to engage and start the process. And, you

know, early on they just felt they wanted to wait some time. And then it was, you know, they made it clear to us that they wanted to wait to the end of the season. And I say all this, Mitch is fully within his rights to do, as any player is, to do whatever they want. Um, so there's no, you know, there's no responsibility on them to say we have to, we have to negotiate at a certain point. Um, so I want to be clear on that. And then as we, as we went through the process and it became clear and clear to us that, um, you know, this, the potential is that, that they may not want to engage in contract. You know, we, we, we looked at other opportunities,

right? And throughout this process with, with, with Mitch's contractual rights that he had, you know, he controlled a lot of this process, right? And again, that was negotiated, that's fully within his rights. And so in a lot of ways he controlled the process because he had a no move clause. Now that doesn't prohibit us having conversations on potential outcomes. And I'm not gonna get into a lot of, you know, a lot of the, get into the weeds in terms of my discussions with the players representative, because I think those things

are, you know, those should be left confidential. But I would, I would say Brian, the short version is as we as we got into the season, it became more and more clear that there was a strong possibility that they wouldn't necessarily want to be engaging in any discussions with us. When you mention not engaging or not revealing the details of speaking with this representative, I'm curious, at any point did you speak with Mitch directly? Yeah, I have conversations with our players, of course. I mean, the business part of it, that's why they hire agents. So, you know, the agents hire the, or excuse me, handle all the business affairs. And that's not, you know, that's the way it should be right that's where they have agents to handle that the players job is to play but you always you know with a

player of Mitch's magnitude and you have conversations you know you certainly have conversations at certain points with the eight or with the player but both of our communication is always through the players representative so Brad you threw out a phrase at your season any press conference that's stuck around the dna phrase and you talked about the change needed in that department uh... how'd you characterize your progress today on that amazing of the line would stick around in our market

she had a good one of the other Chris. Yeah, it was a good one though. Better than snot. Yeah, it was a good one. Yeah, yeah. Well, again, when I talk about the DNAs, and again, and I tried to reference it that day, is I know we all wanna jump in and say, okay, we gotta change 20 players.

That's not it. A lot of this is mentality. Certainly we're gonna try to find ways to make our team better. Um, and that, that sometimes does involve of changing of personnel, but it's also in those, in those critical moments, right? You get to the end of the playoffs and you're, we're all emotional. If you know, you're losing game seven around two and it feels like you've missed the playoffs

for five straight years. But the focus when I look at our group was just in those critical moments, finding a way to be better, defining a way to be at our very best. And that's what I was focused around when I talk about that. So some of that's, you know, that's what I was focused around when I talk about that. So some of that's internally, some of that's, you know, or whether it be from between the

years and some of that's in terms of personnel. So that's when I talked about that, you know, or when I made that statement, that's, that's really what I was alluding to. And, and from, you know, there's, there's a lot of things we work on with our group over the course of the summer and in our communication with them. But as far as the personnel side, it's a work in progress right now. We've made, you know, we were able to do, you know,

handle a couple of our files prior to today with John, with John Tavares, Matthew Nyes, the acquisition of Michelli, and we'll continue to work at it. We continue to work as we said earlier, and as Noodle has mentioned, we've got some time here before we start the season. Today's a big day on the calendar, but we will continue to work

at trying to find ways to improve our team. With Brad Treeliving, the GM of the Maple Leafs, we haven't heard from Austin Matthews, you know, really since the end of the season. I wasn't anticipating hearing from him today, but I'm curious if you have any insight on how, you know, he's taken the news that Mitch Marner is not going to be his teammate anymore. I haven't talked to, I haven't talked to Austin today and obviously they've got a close personal relationship. You know, a lot of, and I don't think it would be unusual that you guys aren't speaking with him today, obviously. He's, he's, he's not in town. Um, but that's probably a question better suited for him. I know obviously they had a close relationship.

Um, but I also understand, you know, what I found in this day and age too, is, is, you know, players, you know, they're, they respect each, each other's personal business, right? They, they're, they're, they're a close unit, um, as a team. And, and I, but I think the players around the league, everybody's, you know, got their own personal business to take care of. I think, uh, players are respectful of that. They don't want to infringe upon, um, you know, anything that's what I would deem personal business. But I also think that this is a shock to today.

I don't think Austin was waking up shocked to the news of the move. But certainly that there were teammates for a long time and they've got a close personal relationship and I don't want to speak for Austin at all, but I'm sure as all of us are, you wish them the very best, but you also look forward to what's ahead for us. Trey, you end up getting Nicholas, is it Waa or Roy? Where are we gonna go? It's Waa, now he's even closer to Quebec now. Okay, so Nicholas-

And he grew up a Leaf fan, that's what he was saying today. And Michelli, talk about the players that you have brought in here, little different look. Michelli, I think, has some skill. He's not a big guy, but it looks, I saw him live a few times last year. I really liked him. And then, Wah has, you know, he has to use the word snot.

Like he's got, he's a big guy who plays hard and he can be versatile. Like, you know, talk about the guys that you brought in here, maybe a little different look. Yeah, well, Nick, Nick is a real good player. You know, he's, he's, he's sort of, I think there's even more opportunity for him here. That's a strong center group that they have in Vegas. Right shot center, long guy, really has excelled in a defensive role in terms of matchups, playing against good players on the other team, penalty killing. But there's some, you know, he's got good hands, there's some sneaky

skill there. Um, you know, highly competitive player. You look around teams that win, you need that. You know, we all, we all talk, you know, we all want to put everybody into a box of a first line player, secondline player. You know, we've, I think there's, you know, a lot of talk about second-line centers all over the league right now, but, you know, if you don't necessarily, and I'm not speaking just for our situation,

but if you don't necessarily have the perfect one, two, three, four down the middle, you know, there's lots of teams that you, it's all, the league is all based on matchups. And I think Nick is a guy that can take heavy matchups. You know, if you look, look at Winnipeg for an example, who's had, we won the president's trophy this year. You know, we're Adam Lowry, I think everybody would consider as a third line center. He really plays in a heavy matchup role. So you've got Shifeley, then you've got, you've

got Lowry taking heavy matchups, and then you've got Nemesnikov coming in sort of underneath. And, you know, that's where I look at a player like Nick, who's able to, if you look at our situation right now with Austin and John, I think he's able to come in and play in a real matchup role. Our series with Florida, again, when you look at how things played out from a match standpoint. Barkov took Austin, Lundell for the most part was playing against John and then Bennett comes in and when you can get a favorable matchup. And that's an area for us that we really wanted

to try to address is somebody that can come in here and potentially play in a matchup role, handle some penalty killing responsibilities, gives us a right shot center at the faceoff. So been a really good player for Vegas and I expect to be a good player for us. And Michelli, as you said, he's a guy who had a down year this year. We think he brings some skill, some creativity, you know, with some of the players in our team, their offensive abilities, I think he can complement, he can complement those players. He's looking, he was obviously looking for a fresh start. And we'll see. We think the cost was, was manageable for some potential upside here. And so we're, I know speaking with him,

he's excited to get in here. He's excited to get around our group. So we're looking forward to see what he can bring us. Brad, we'll get you out of here on a question about those Cup champs. You just referenced that matchup and you know, they find a way to bring back Bennett, bring back Ekblad, bring back Brad Marshann.

We were discussed it all day today and we've been discussing it for weeks. They're clearly the crown jewel of the NHL right now. They're within your division. How often are you thinking of that specific matchup? How you beat Florida when you're building out your roster? Well, they've set the bar, so you're obviously, you know, you're obviously looking to them and they've done a phenomenal job.

You know, they're bringing back the same team, so you know, they're the gold standard right now. I think, you know, you can't be just laser focused on one particular team, if you will. Now that's, they're the cream of the crop you got to continue to find ways to make you know make your team better where's the areas that you can improve in what's opportunities are available to you so everybody in the league knows this you know what Florida's all about we've seen them now I was here for the first go around with them a couple of years ago, but had them this year in the playoffs. And they've set, like

I said, when you've gone to three straight finals and won two cups, you set the standard. But I looked throughout our division and I said it a year ago, you have teams that have been in rebuild processes for the last number of years that have taken big steps and are now becoming really good teams. The Ottawa's, the Montreal's, Detroit and Buffalo continue to improve. The division's a really good division. Certainly Florida sits where they sit for a reason, but you go throughout the Atlantic and there's no easy nights.

Yeah, there's no questioning that and that's been the case for a long, long time and we anticipate it will continue. We know it's a busy time. We always appreciate you finding some for us. Thank you for doing this, Brad. Be back, guys. Have a good day. You too, Brad. You bet, guys. Have a good day. You too, Brad. Tree Living, GM of the Maple Leafs.

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Now, learn the details of how they came to be. Join Ruby Carr for Encore, the stories behind the songs you love. New interviews and newly unearthed archive footage make for a fascinating weekly deep dive. The biggest songs in the world. You've heard them countless times. Now, learn the details of how they came to be. Join Ruby Carr for Encore, the stories behind the songs you love.

New interviews and newly unearthed archive footage make for a fascinating weekly deep dive. The biggest songs in the world. You've heard them countless times. Now, learn the details of how they came to be. Join Ruby Carr for Encore, the stories behind the songs you love. New interviews and newly unearthed archive footage make for a fascinating weekly deep dive. Stream Encore, the stories behind the songs you love on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.