The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: David Pagnotta on Maple Leafs GM Search, NHL Front Office Openings & College Free Agents

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

David Pagnotta joins Jeff Marek to break down the latest news from around the NHL, starting with the ongoing general manager search for the Toronto Maple Leafs and what the organization could be looking for in its next front office leader. Pagnotta discusses how the process may unfold, the type of candidates teams prioritize in today’s NHL, and how other openings around the league — including Nashville — could impact the executive market. The conversation also shifts to the NCAA free agent landscape, highlighted by Michigan standout TJ Hughes, as teams look to add talented college players once their seasons come to an end. From front office movement to emerging talent entering the league, Pagnotta provides insight into what NHL teams are watching closely right now.SHOUTOUT TO OUR SPONSORS!!👍🏼 Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/👍🏼 Ninja: https://www.sharkninja.ca/ninja-crispi-pro-6-in-1-countertop-glass-air-fryer-rose-quartz/AS101CRS.html?utm_source=Meta&utm_medium=Paid+Social&utm_campaign=H1NinjaCrispi&utm_content=NinjaEN&dwvar_AS101CRS_color=cdb9b8Reach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@FNBarnBurner🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoffReach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's get right to him. DFO Insider from the fourth period, our good friend Dave Panyoda, where everybody else on the network is bailing, not our man, Dave, he's still in here. You want to talk about grinding? This guy grinds. Hey, real quick, before we get into a couple of things here,

just had a conversation with Chris Pronger. Sooner or later, media is going to lose Chris Bronger. Like, he is going to be a general manager at some point sooner than later. Like, that does seem to be the career path here. for prong or agree, disagree. No, fully agree. Yeah. Like, we're not going to get him this often by any stretch.

And suddenly, you know, the text messages back are going to be less frequent. I can't answer that. Figure that out yourself. Here they come. That's a nice way, but I get. Yeah, exactly. Because, yeah, he is. I think he's poised to join an organization pretty soon. I heard you right before coming on.

Maybe it's an AGM role. maybe it's right at the top. But without question, sooner or later, this guy is going to be at the helm of a hockey club. The traditional way to do it is do the AGM rule. I understand that. But for someone like Pronger, does it not,

and given the experience in the NHL, with NHL teams, media, a player, like does it not seem as if there should be a door open? Not that you're just going to hand someone to GM's spot, but like a door open to go right to the GM chair? Yeah, I mean, look, he's, He's dabbled in other areas of business, and that's a big part of the equation as well.

And he's obviously a brilliant hockey mind and a guy who's been there a number of times, you know, Hall of Fame presence. But he has the other intricacies of running a hockey club from the business side of it, which is pretty important, you know, certainly. And you see, like Matthew Darsh, after his playing career, he went into the business side before getting into the hockey element. Like he was a company out of Montreal. I can't remember the name, I think Delmar,

but he handled marketing for them and business ops for them before going back into the hockey side of things with the Tampa Bay Lightning. So he gained experience in that element. Prong says a lot of business side to him along with obviously the hockey background. Danny Breyer, Philadelphia Flyers, went to Wharton and then got back into the hockey.

That makes a ton of sense. Okay, so a few things to get here. the Leafs General Manager Search and right away the name Mike Gillis came out and I think for a good reason and that was sort of backed up by Keith Pelley's press conference

and he talked about data by the way I was mentioning this on the show yesterday not to be too cynical Dave but I think he can sympathize with this how many how many people out there are going to now rebrand themselves as data-centric candidates all of a sudden.

I'll come short of calling it grifting, but how many people all of a sudden now will present themselves as data-centric for the first time in their careers? I surrender the floor to you on that one. Yeah, I think some resumes have been adjusted this week. As soon as you said that, the resumes, oh, shit, I got to change that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, And he even says, he goes, I got a bunch of calls. I'm probably going to get about 20 more after this is done. And he's right. He's probably got 40 or 50.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, he also mentioned the importance of having the hockey background and the hockey people as part of this. And, and that's why to me, this sounds like this is going to be a multi-tier kind of add to the organization, going back to where they had the president along with the GM, shanny in that role and whatnot. Now, last year at the press conference, I was there as well. when they announced that Brennan Shanahan was not returning, and that position was being eliminated. There's obviously been a shift in mindset to the possibility, and it's not a foregone conclusion that they're going to bring in a president of hockey ops,

but it certainly looks like it's trending in that direction, where you're going to have the top of the helm of the hockey department, and then you're going to have the analytics and the data-centric mindset as part of it. This is going to be a marriage of the two by every indication. And for the hockey guys that are there that have the, or at least have educated themselves in the data element and the analytics part of this game, you know, there's certainly a possibility that they're going to have a little bit of an edge on some of the competition that are more inclined to be one or the other versus a combo of the two. And I think on both sides, you're going to have to, sorry, the other thing as part of this, you know, he mentioned Keith Pelley, mention and was specific to mention that the six assistant general managers as part of the organization, maybe that's not the right structure in place. And that's, that's to be evaluated as well.

That certainly will be evaluated once whoever is brought in is brought in. So I'm anticipating additional changes on the managerial side internally for the Toronto Maple Leafs once they bring in president and or GM and then to kind of go from there. But it's no question that, you know, he pushed that that narrative that moving forward, there will be a very data-centric type of mentality to building this hockey club. The goal is to be in the playoffs next season and then continue to grow from there to get the Stanley Cup contender status legitimately. And they're going to do it what seems to be going in this direction. But again, there's a lot of emphasis on it because of the data-centric term that he used multiple times. It's got to be a marriage of the two. And I think

That's where we're starting to hear names that, yes, there's the analytics driven and analytic specific like Sunny Meta in Florida, but also Brett Peterson and others that have the hockey mentality that may have married the two already. So we're going to hear some interesting names. And sorry, this is long-winded, but going back to Gillis. No, it's good. This is good. Well, thank you. Going back to Gillis and, you know, his potential candidacy for this and them reaching out. I spoke to some people near close to him.

I think it's got to be the absolute right fit for him to consider joining the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. I think people pinpoint that, myself included, have pinpointed him as a prime candidate. But I think it has to be the right fit and the right direction of this organization for him to consider, seriously consider joining the Maple Leafs. Well, it seems as if, and again, like anything you say here about the next candidate, in any situation, always sounds you can take a shot at the previous, either manager or coach. But this isn't what I intend here.

But it looks like the Maple Leafs have a chance here to do something really unique, not just in this team's history, although that is true, but also in the NHL. Like we talk a lot about how there seems to be a transition happening once again on the ice. You know, all of a sudden, you know, Connor McDavid's not young. Nathan McKinnon's not young as this thing now starts to turn over to the Maclean Celabini, Connor Badar, Leo Carlson, like that Matthew Schaefer, like that era of player. And we've seen this before. You know, once upon a time, general managers were all in their 60s and then all of a sudden all the GMs were in their 50s.

Coaches used to be all in their 50s and now they're all in their 40s, right? So things continue to get younger. but from a from a group point of view and again like I will point to Mike Gillis as the lynchpin of this if it is Gillis

I am really interested in who he would bring with him because they have a chance to do something really progressive here we'll get to the coach in a second but they really do have a chance and I know a lot of people are already

like locked up like they're already like Alexander Mandricki's already assistant general manager and Tyler Delo and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, Tim Barnes. Like they're all already locked into their position, so they're not going to make lateral moves. But there's still a lot of interesting people out there

that Gillis could tap. Should they go in that direction? Long-winded side. Right, right. Yeah, and no, but you're, I think, and that's where the mentality, I think, comes in with respect to them reconsidering the possibility of bringing in that president of hockey ops.

It's going to be, and as I said before, like, I think there are going to be additional changes once they bring in these people or person. I think there will be additional changes to the management structure of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I think a lot of that's going to deal with bringing in the analytics-driven department

and enhancing it even further. They've got the cap guy already in Brandon Prenum, who is going to be considered for other positions elsewhere. He's already on Nashville's radar. But to combo the cap element with the analytics and the hockey eye, like this is like a trifect. type of thing that some teams are considering doing and some teams have started to do.

And I think you're bang on. I think the Toronto Maple Leafs are at least from Pelley and his group in terms of ownership are looking at bringing in that type of structure in place. And then how that all gets defined will be up to the individuals that are brought in. But you could certainly see a scenario where it's Gillis. And then perhaps the GM is the married analytics hockey eye. And then you've got to build out your hockey analytics department. The previous regime didn't put too much emphasis in that from the analytic side.

And it seems like they want to have that shift because certainly, based on what he said on Tuesday, Nipelli indicated that, yeah, we need to focus on the data slash analytics. Now, I like the way that he said data-centric because there seems to be when it's analytics specific, there's this weird notion in sports lately that it's it's numbers only and that's not going to you know that's not going to get things done the data centric has kind of shifted away from the term analytics and and I think that was strategic on his part was it a trial balloon there's a theory out there that that was a trial balloon to see how the market reacted like I've known like a full disclosure like Heath and Scott Moore with two people that hired me

like so I have that that that background so I understand I was saying this on the show yesterday. You can quibble with what Keith Pelley said and how you feel about Keith Pelley. I'm talking about hockey fans here, Maple Leafs fans specifically. But Keith Pelley doesn't do anything frivolously. Keith Pelley does things very deliberately.

And sometimes things that he does have an agenda to them that might not be obvious at the time. I was on with Securus from Price yesterday. I do ahead every week with them. And one of the things that Maddie was bringing up was, you know, was that by saying data-centric, it was a trial balloon to see how that term went over and perhaps a chumming of the waters for someone like Mike Gillis, just to see how the market reacted.

Like sometimes, you know, sometimes these press conferences are glorified, you know, focus tests to see how messages are just going to go over. Like, do you think part of that was essentially a Keith Pelley and Toronto Maple Leafs, for lack of a better term, focus group, focus test? Yeah. Well, I think that's why he, as I mentioned, specifically said data-centric versus analytics-driven or analytics-focused or whatever, changing the terminology to see if that's going to resonate a little bit better or be more acceptable to the fan base. And not just to the fan base. I think you just mentioned it. To your point, to see if candidates are going to want to be part of something that's data-centric, which is just another term, basically, for

analytics-driven. But, you know, can you work within... a structure that is heavy on the numbers. Now, it has to match the eye test in most degrees. You know, Eric Tulski and the crew in Carolina, the hockey side of things is pretty much Roddy Brindamore and saying, here's what I need on my team. This is the type of players I need. These are the, here are some comparisons.

Go figure that out. Go bring me that caliber player or that person that you believe fits the numbers, but that can fit this system. I think that's where they would like to go. The Maple Leafs would like to go in that element. I think other teams have kind of brought that into the mix as well to different degrees. But that's kind of how we're seeing some of these hockey teams operate. And the Toronto Maple Leafs, you know, specifically including or mentioning youth movements

and things of that nature with regards to the Canadians and Sabres, which was interesting, certainly, for him to kind of pinpoint them specifically. He tried to then mention the rest of the teams in the same. the Atlantic, but he then emphasized for a second time the Sabres and Habs and how they've kind of gone about their business in the last little while. It's clear that the Toronto Maple Leafs want to follow that model to a degree while being competitive, basically ASAP. Okay, so we do wonder about the coach in Toronto as well. And I saw you talking about Mani Malhotra. Yeah. Fascinating name. We don't know about Adam Foote and the Vancouver

Canucks and the future there. The one thing that, and again, let me get way out. ahead of myself here. Let me get way ahead of everybody here. There is one thing that I would think would complicate, curious your thoughts on this, that would complicate a team hiring Mani Malhotra as their coach, and that's his son. So Caleb Malhotra is going to go really high in the draft.

He's the best center available in this year's draft. Vancouver is drafting high. Toronto might draft high as well. if either of those two teams draft Caleb Malhotra, will that, should that, disqualify Mani from coaching that team, just because you don't want that father's son dynamic for the obvious optics of it.

Right. It's an interesting, yeah, you know what, I'll be honest with you, Jeff, I didn't think of that. It makes a lot of sense as to why a team wouldn't. You don't want to go in. You don't want to go in. You don't want to. it. You don't. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Because that's a, that's a dangerous slope. It's

not even slippery. It's a dangerous slope optically and publicly. Now, with respect to Vancouver, I haven't, like, I know there's a lot of talk right now with regards to Alveen and Rutherford, you know, planning his out. I think he'll be around next season, Rutherford. But beyond that, I'm not too sure. I don't know where Alveen is right now in terms of that same mentality, it wouldn't be surprised if there is a change at the helm in that regard this offseason or when their season ends. But I haven't heard much on foot. That's a little bit of pushback.

Can I pause on that? That's BS. Yeah. I really hate that because we all know who makes it. Because I've heard that too and I think it's bullshit. Like we all know who makes the decisions in Vancouver. And if they end up hanging and you can feel however anyone watching can feel however they want about Patrick Alvin.

But if Alvin is the one that they hang out to dry for the decisions. that were made when we all know where the decisions are being made, I'm sorry. That's BS. I don't like it either. He's the one that walks the plank. Yeah. And I believe Rutherford has a year left on his contract. I'm not 100% on it, but people that I was talking to this week said that he's got another

year on that deal. He's getting paid pretty handsomely. One more year to go and then, you know, people expect a bit of a send-off. afterwards. Making the Alvin move or the GM move now would be a little bit questionable. And it's not just you, like there will be other people that will take that in a rough way. Like you're using that as the scapegoat right now to make this change. And whoever you bring in is going to help the transition of the president

eventually retiring. But that's kind of all the ideas that are being discussed or have been discussed internally anyway, with respect to the Canucks. Bringing it back to foot, I haven't heard as much, like I know his name kind of has been out there to a certain extent, but I don't think there's an appetite,

at least from ownership, to make that coaching change now. Maybe later, maybe later being next season and on. But then the Malhotra element comes into play. And if the organization feels very highly that he is, you know, we can't afford to let this guy go, then maybe that changes that mindset and that philosophy. Because I know there's a little bit of regret internally in the LA King's organization

for letting Marco Stern go over to Boston and not making a change behind the bench and bringing him in last offseason. They could have. They had the chance. Exactly. They had the chance. You know, does Vancouver, learn from that if they really believe Malhotra is their guy, because I can tell you, the L.A. Kings are going to have interest in many Malhotra.

And I think if Toronto Maple Leafs do make a change behind the bench, and it still seems like that's likely. And credit to Keith Pelley for deflecting because he was asked about it. And he said, that's the new guys. Whoever's heading hockey ops, that'll be his decision. And then just leave it at that. Hopefully nobody asks me another question. So good for him on that.

But that's kind of like, I can see the Leafs going in that. direction too. Here's the thing, though. Like, what if Vancouver or Toronto and get the lottery luck and they draft, here's the thing that complicates it. What if they draft?

They both get, like one of the two gets the third pick. Right. Yeah. And that's, I mean. Or even the second. Like, I could see Caleb Mahotra going too. There's,

there are a lot of people very high on them. Like you said top center in, in the draft, right? And I think from, I think from the Leafs, I mean, well, it's tough to, it's tough to say right now because we don't know, which is also part of the reason why, you know, Pelley mentioned in a perfect world, middle of May. Middle of May, perfect world, we've got our guy. Worst case, it's the first week of June. You're giving yourself that two-week buffer.

I think personally you should probably make this decision sooner, beginning first half of May, but he indicated middle of May is the perfect time frame because it gives you time to kind of plan things out. And by middle of May, you'll know your draft lottery standings. We'll know where the teams kind of fall and rank because that's going to be prior to that. So maybe teams like Toronto wait until they know what the draft order is going to be in the first round before making those types of decisions, Vancouver included. Interesting. Okay, before I let you go, we're going to play a clip here from T.J. Hughes that I recorded a couple of months ago. College free agents.

And he's right, the thing there's like, I think it's like 30 teams, Dave, that are that are chasing, that are chasing T.J. Hughes. And then one thing that I've said is like he's led Michigan in scoring the last two seasons. And the one thing about T.J. Hughes is unlike a lot of other college free agents forward specifically. Generally, you don't find free agents that give you offense. Those guys are done. Like those guys are drafted. Those guys are part of organizations. That's different with T.J. Hughes.

classic late bloomer, led Michigan is scoring last two seasons, 30 teams chasing. I know Edmonton's been there, Vancouver has been there, Colorado. Like, do you have a sense of, yeah, like, do you have a sense like which way Hughes could be leaning here? And I know Frozen Four in Vegas coming up, et cetera, but isn't it fascinating one? It is because there are pretty much the entire league that has interest in this kid, like legitimate interest. This isn't just what you consider. This is we want you here. So, you know, he's being sold on all 30 of those markets and which one is you going to

choose. Well, that's what, you know, you got to evaluate. And, you know, we just rifled off a few teams, but like there's pretty much the entire league that has. Everybody. Yeah. That wants to get a hold of this kid because of what he's capable of. And like this, he's 24.

Like, he can slot in. Like, obviously you'll have to get adjusted in this. and the other and all that stuff with the system and obviously the league being considerably better. But this is a player that can potentially step in immediately at his age. And that also for a lot of teams is ridiculously attractive. And that's why I think teams like Toronto and Edmonton have viewed him as a player that can step in and, you know, play with some of the big boys right out of the gate. Or at least they want to see that. and how attractive is that to him to join an organization with a Connor McDavid caliber,

a Nathan McKinnon caliber, a Sidney Crosby in the last couple of years of his career caliber, and so on and so on. So I don't know what that timeline is for him just yet. And I thought by now we'd have a better indication of when things were going to narrow down to a short list. but I think there's an overwhelming factor of just all of these teams and so many options available that he's got to take his time and do his due diligence to make sure he's making the right decision for him. Excellent points. This has been great.

Listen, I know it's a day when a lot of people have bailed, but not you. First star, Premier 12th, Dave Pan Yota. Thanks as always, bud. Have a great weekend. You're rolling the show too. First star times five is for you. I got nothing else to do in my life. I just talk about hockey and then twiddle my thumbs until I'm back on the air.

But thanks for the kudos, pal. You'd be good. Thanks, Dave. You too, buddy. Take care.