The Toronto Maple Leafs are making headlines despite having a typically horrendous season, all because they have fired their general manager. Brad Treliving is out of a job after ruining that team up north for a whole lot of years (thank you for the first-round draft pick, Brad) and now the highly coveted position of running the team at the center of the hockey universe is up for grabs.

And a member of the Philadelphia Flyers front office reportedly wants it.

Flyers executive Dean Lombardi interested in Leafs job

Elliotte Friedman appeared on Real Kyper & Bourne on Wednesday to go over all the details about the Maple Leafs’ search for a new general manager and how there is just countless executives in and out of the NHL who are looking to get their hands on the position.

One of those names is current Flyers senior advisor Dean Lombardi, apparently.

“I think there’s a ton of interest in this job. Like I said yesterday, there will be and now there is. I think they are getting people coming out of the woodwork and I think it’s some of the obvious ones, and I think it’s some of the non-obvious ones,” Friedman said Wednesday.

“I believe they’ve already talked to Mike Gillis. I think there was a report today that they’ve talked to John Chayka, and those guys are data-driven guys. … I’ve heard Dean Lombardi’s got interest in this job, or at least some role in this job. And I think you’re going to find there’s people all around the NHL who are going, who have current jobs, whoa re going to be saying ‘I would like to at least throw my name in and be interviewed for that’.”

Lombardi’s name is mentioned more in passing and this is really the first time it’s been brought up in relation to the Maple Leafs general manager job. It is certainly interesting that he is poking around to see if he can get an interview and potentially leave the Flyers organization.

The veteran executive is a senior advisor along with four other people who hold the exact same title, and it’s who you expect: Bob Clarke, Bill Barber, and Paul Holmgren for the Flyers representation, and then former Anaheim Ducks general manager Bob Murray as well. It’s basically a retirement home for former executives to still get to voice their opinions on hockey operations of an up-and-coming team.

We have no clue what Lombardi does with the Flyers currently, other than him just getting a guaranteed paycheck to return to Philadelphia. From 2003-2006, he served as a Western Conference scout for the Flyers as an in-between job — between being the San Jose Sharks’ general manager for over a decade, to then being hired to eventually take the Los Angeles Kings to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. Lombardi was hired by the Flyers in this senior advisor role in 2017.

What might take Lombardi out of the running for the job in Toronto, is the fact that they apparently want someone more data-focused to be a general manager and running things with more numbers in mind. Lombardi’s Kings team were certainly very good teams with the underlyings numbers heavily in their favor, but it is unclear just how accepting he is of analytics overall.

And with names in the running like former Canucks boss Mike Gillis (who was way ahead of his time) and former wunderkind John Chayka, Lombardi might just be too much of a hockey man for the Leafs general manager. Now, maybe he could be in more of an overseeing president of hockey operations role, but that is also to be determined.

Anyways, he has the comfortable position in Philadelphia and won’t be moved unless offered something massive, which feels also unlikely. But he’s still throwing his hat in the ring.