OverDrive - Treliving on the Maple Leafs' trade deadline moves, Laughton and Carlo's addition and the depth on the roster

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the NHL Trade Deadline, the team acquiring Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, the depth bolstering on the roster, the approach to the season heading into the playoffs and more.

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Switch to Bell PureFiber, Canada's fastest internet, awarded by UCCLA. Starting from $60 a month. Visit bell.ca for more details and to check availability. Here's the GM of the Maple Leafs, Brad Trey Living. Where were you all day, Trey? What were you doing out there? Well, I would have liked to have been in the P.F. Chang's there with noodles. We were hunkered down here at the hotel, so yeah, busy day. Absolutely.

Well, let's go through the acquisitions. I guess we'll go in chronological order. You bring in Scott Lawton. He's an Oakville guy. He's got a year left on his deal after this. They retain 50% of the deal in terms of his cap hit. Third line center, I know you guys obviously went out and acquired it the whole city the whole fan base have been

talking about it for a long time why was it important to make this acquisition and why do you think Scott Lawton's the right guy for it? Well a number of things I think you know the first thing as you said I mean a Toronto kid, and that's not the reason you're bringing him back here, but I've been watching Scott since he was playing in Oshawa. And the first thing that everybody talks about when it comes to Scott is just such a character guy. I remember him, like I said, in junior, he's the captain of his junior team. You know, just the way people that have played with him, coached him, worked with him, just

the highest level of character, very competitive guy. I think he just brings a lot of depth to the center-edge position. As you said, it's an area we've tried to look at for a while now. And, you know, even coming into this deadline, you saw, you know, there wasn't a lot of centers available. I think this is the first deadline for, you know, in recent memory where, you know, there's a lot of teams going into, you know, going in the night before and two nights before the deadline where, you know, there's a lot of teams going into, you know, going into the night before and two nights before the deadline where, you know, they could have gone either way in terms of declaring whether they were, you know, buying or selling. So trying to get a sense of what, you know,

what was going to be available in the market and especially the center position, the premium position. Um, you know, there's versatility in his game. Um, you can kill penalties, you know, he's got some bite to his game. So there's, you know, to me, there's not much not to like about Scott. And I can tell you, like, here's a guy who, you know, you listen to some of the words that were spoken about him in Philly when he left there and the impact he had and you know it's an emotional day for him. I mean this guy's been a flyer his whole career but he got emotional on the phone talking to him today, coming home, being a Leaf, what it means to him. You know so it was it was it was exciting to add him and looking

forward to seeing him join the group here tomorrow or tonight. So, you guys in colorado are playing the avalanche tomorrow night Um, yeah I made the mistake of asking your head coach if he has an idea of what that game one roster will look like and the Playoff scene shot me down pretty quickly last week And so we're taking it day by day, but you know as a manager you have to be thinking Okay, this is how we can piece it together and then then Craig will, I guess, take it from there. And as it currently stands, you got Austin, John Tavares, Scott Laudin, I'm guessing David Camp is your fourth line center.

Like when you look at that four pack up the middle and now the options that could go to the wing, how do you feel about your depth today? As we creep closer towards the playoffs up front. Oh, well, Brian, you're always greedy, you always want more. You know and so we were trying to navigate that but I you know to me the object was you know you're trying to get as many good players as you can you know I think we're a better team today than we were a day ago. I like our depth in the middle but you know not just those

four guys, the ability, I always think it's important to have, you know, seven centers or seven guys that can play the middle. It's such an important position. You're going to have injuries, you know, having guys that can, you know, move off the wall to the middle of the ice is critical. And, you know, we've got that now we've got, you know, and can do the different jobs, right? You know, we needed to take some, and can do the different jobs. We needed to take a little bit of weight off guys on the penalty kill, where I think Scott can help there. Any key situations, some defensive zone face-offs, some of the heavy lifting there matchup wise so i i like i said i like to look a bit better

today um better i like to look today than better than i did yesterday and as you said some versatility the guys can sort of move back and forth and as you know we still got 20 you know 20 plus games to go and and it's still a grind at the end of the year so having that depth i think is important so you made the depth addition on the forward side Brad and now you also made a depth addition and more than that on the defensive side. What sort of was the defenseman market like and how did you end up arriving at Brandon Carlo? Well the market was you know it was it was it know, it was a tight market. You know, it was, as I said earlier, trying to determine, you know, A, who's in and who's

out and who's available. And then those premier positions, not to put the wingers down, but, you know, center ice men and then those right shot D, you know, they're hard to find. And you could tell by, you know, the limited product, the prices were, you know, as you know, good on the sellers when there's limited product, you can charge, you know, where you wanna charge and see if people wanna buy.

And Brandon's been a guy, you know, obviously we've been aware of him and been a fan of this for a long time. I think he's been, and again, you talk to the Boston people, I think he's been a, you know, maybe, maybe they've had, they've had great success in Boston over his tenure there. And maybe not the sexiest name, but I think he's been a big part of that success. You know, again, in some of the guts of the game pieces, penalty kill, um, you know, he's a big man. He's got, he's long, he's rangey, he's got great reach.

Um, you know, he's hard around the blue paint. So, you know, I just thought adding another right shot D, uh, was important. Um, and to handle some of those tough minutes, you know, we've seen, can he's been out here for a week or so and, you know, be able to distribute those minutes and have somebody that can handle, you know, handle some PK time. That was critical for us. So we like his size.

We like his range. You know, he's coming from, you know, a great program in Boston where he's been a big part of it. And again, he was excited about it today. You know, it's a switch from I said, I like the look of him already in the blue jersey that black and gold thing he got off. So but real good, you know, we were happy to get him. It was it was it was a grind.

But we were we were happy to bring them forward. With Brad, Tree Living GM of the Leafs, Leafs AFS tomorrow night. Now you look at it, you've been here for about a year and a half, two years. You have Morgan Riley on term, Chris Tanev on term, Jake McCabe on term, Brandon Carlo on term, Oliver Ekman-Larson on term, five veterans, five guys with multiple years on their deals. How beneficial is that for you as a GM to know that you have that locked in? You don't have any rentals currently

in terms of those top five defensemen for you. What does that open up for you in the future knowing that you guys have all these players locked in? Well, it's important. And especially today. Listen, I've said it publicly before, I prefer when you're out spending assets and listen we were shopping in the rental market meeting up to the deadline, we were shopping into the last two days, but you always prefer, you pay a price and you don't like to see a walk out

the door, you know, a few months later. So the fact that we've got, you know, an experienced blue line, you know, one of the things when we came in here, we, you know, we wanted to, we wanted to add some links to the blue line. I think there's lots of versatility there. You know, you've got, you've got some guys, some lefties that can play on the right. It's a veteran group. They all kind of do some different jobs. I think when we, you know, a lot of time we put into, you know, looking at how potential pairings would go and speaking a lot with,

with chief. And I think you, you know, you've got puck movers, you got, you got some guys that can defend hard. But having that cost certainty and having those defencemen, especially the big thing with Tern is we're living in a rising cap era. And so when you can get those numbers locked in, you know, the only day more difficult than the deadline day is July 1.

So when you're not out there shopping for defence and shopping for veterans, defence and shopping for right-shot defence on July 1, that was a big part of what we tried to accomplish here today. And like I said, excited about that group.

TRE, in your press conference, you talked about the human element right guys that are going out you thanked guys for their service with the organization. Now that you get through the deadline do you address the troops you go into the room and have a conversation hey this is what we're doing now we're trying to you know continue to build the program for something special or do you allow chief to to have that conversation or is it a combination of both of you? Yeah, I'll go down there tomorrow like the way we were set up here today. I was at the hotel when the guys were skating.

But yeah, I try to limit my time down there. They don't need to see me down there a whole lot. But I'm going to talk to them tomorrow. This is our group now, I felt the group. It was my responsibility to add to the group. They deserve it. I thought we had areas that we needed to upgrade in. Like I said, you're always greedy, you always want more.

You never know how it's going to flow, but you know, this is the group that we're gonna, you know, we're gonna jump into the fight with you're starting tomorrow night. So, and I think there's, as you know, this is the group that we're gonna, you know, we're gonna jump into the fight with you starting tomorrow night. So and I think there's, you know, noodles, you know, the other part of it is, you know, the team, you know, the deadline, the deadline is a difficult time because every, you know, everybody sort of wonder as a player and we lose sight of that human part of it. I know you guys do such great job and up in Canada there's not much coverage of the deadlines. You've been here all day, we're as tired as you are.

Uncle, we're at a TVL like uncle. But the other part of it is, as exciting as it is, and that's part of our job. Hey, we all stand up for it. This isn't something that we should feel sorry for, but a lot of guys get uprooted today. Like, guys are getting on planes away from families and all those things. And again, I'm not asking for anybody to feel sorry for them, but I think it's important that, you know, we understand that too.

So today we're excited about bringing a couple good players in, but we said goodbye to some good guys today who, you know, they're packing up their stuff and jumping on the bird and, you know, their lights kind of got turned on this year. So I think it's important that, you know, things need to be handled the right way. Two good young players, you know, Fraser Minton, who I think is going to be a terrific NHL player. And Nikita Grvenkin, who we got to see in the Leafs uniform here throughout the year. Those are tough, but when you're looking to add your team, you've got to give to get. But I'll go into more rules.

And you always want to give the guys something. I think as you're going out dead line, you know, the guys are looking around them and seeing where the competition is at. So you got to be focused on not just doing something to do something, but we try to, you know, kind of be focused and disciplined on attacking some areas that we thought we need to attack. But you always feel a little bit better when you can give the guys a little help the rest of the way.

Well, you guys have 20 games left to go and a few games left against Florida, a game against Tampa. You know, you're two points back in Florida with a game in hand, that top seed in the Atlantic. That's a pretty valuable spot, and I know you're aware of that, so we'll see where you guys take it from here Brad But I know it's been a busy day and congrats on the moves you made and we appreciate you taking time for us. We're

Wish you nothing but success down the road. Thank you for this All right, good job. There's Brad Trillip in the GM of the Maple Leafs The best of our great nation, one song at a time. This is Justin Bieber. Hi, this is Terry Clark. We are Nickelback. Made in Canada, on iHeartRadio. Rock, pop, hip hop, and when it comes to country,

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