We hope MLSE president Keith Pelley isn’t in the habit of taking walks near the downtown arena where the Leafs (one of the seven teams he governs) play something resembling hockey.
With Pelley’s awareness of what’s going on around him, he’s a lock to get run over by a mail truck.
Or a freight train.
In case you just arrived from Irkutsk, Pelley held a news conference Tuesday in the wake of the dismissal of Toronto GM Brad Treliving, fired for being the poor schmuck who followed boy genius Kyle Dubas at the helm of the Maple Leafs.
Dubas created the mess they now call the Leafs. Treliving arrived in town just in time to say goodbye to Mitch Marner (who, it turns out, was not the problem) and to watch Toronto miss the playoffs for the first time in what will be known (for better or worse) as the Auston Matthews Era.
And Pelley was left to explain how a team with a boatload of expensive but sadly mismatched talent has become a dependable failure machine.
Pelley did explain it, in a sense — but he was supremely unaware that he was lifting the curtain to expose the shambles that underlies an organization that has consistently managed to do less with more. The truth is that the Leafs are a closed circuit, run by suits, for suits.
Guys like Pelley are the reason the Leafs fail. It’s the reason they got rid of Brian Burke — because while Burke can be a jackass, he’s a jackass who knows the game and speaks his mind.
A few hours after MLSE president Keith Pelley’s disastrous news conference, the playoff-bound Canadiens express train roared into Tampa.
Ernest Doroszuk / Postmedia
The line that will haunt Toronto for a decade or two is Pelley’s admission that “we didn’t see the train coming,” in reference to the ascension of the Buffalo Sabres and the Canadiens to the upper rungs of the conference while the Leafs skidded to the bottom.
“We didn’t see the train coming” is destined to go straight into Leafs lore alongside “We won the handshake line.” Both statements are hilarious and both are symptomatic of a massive failure.
Pelley’s comment left Steve Dangle (the Maple Leafs uber-fan who became famous for his epic rants after various Leaf calamities) so beside himself that his voice went up a couple of octaves.
“I can forgive you for not seeing the Buffalo Sabres run coming,” Dangle said after Pelley’s news conference, “because even the Buffalo Sabres didn’t see this run coming. But you didn’t see the Montreal Canadiens coming? Do you know how out of touch you have to be with the National Hockey League to not know that the Montreal Canadiens (who made the playoffs last year) are one of the best up-and-coming teams in the league?
“They have three guys who are going to get Calder votes this year. They have the reigning Calder winner. Cole Caufield hasn’t even entered his prime. What do you mean, you didn’t see the Montreal Canadiens coming? Today I learned the Maple Leafs president is a deer.”
If “we didn’t see the train coming” was the tag line, the clue to what is really wrong in Toronto lies in what Pelley clearly thought was the insightful bit in his opening remarks:
“I am here to create the overall vision, the strategy, put the structure, put the process, put the pillars in place for us to have the right culture, for us to develop a winning and contending team year after year. Success in business for me is quite simple. It’s about vision, strategy, people and execution.”
There it is. The reason the Leafs fail year after year and why they’re destined to go on failing. Almost every word of that little speech is right out of the Executives’ Guide to Corporate Bafflegab. It’s pure horse manure, but it hits almost every buzzword in the corporate handbook: “Vision.” “Strategy.” “Structure.” “Process.” “Culture.” (How Pelley missed “synergy” is a mystery.)
If the fans and media of the Maple Leafs had not been so obnoxious while winning two playoff series in a decade, we might almost feel sorry for them.
A few hours after Pelley’s newser, the playoff-bound to face one of the very few teams ahead of them in the standings. They were looking for their sixth straight win and third straight on the road.
It felt like a playoff game. The Lightning are very good. So are the Canadiens. Montreal grabbed the lead on a beauty goal by Juraj Slafkovsky, who just turned 22. They lost it when the Bolts evened the score, took it back on Caufield’s 47th goal of the season — and held it as Jakub Dobes stopped 17 shots in the third period.
On Monday, I wrote that there was no team in the East the Canadiens could not beat. Tuesday night, they proved me right. But if they are going to reach the Stanley Cup final, we suspect the Canadiens will have to beat the Sabres somewhere along the way.
Before Game 1, perhaps Nick Suzuki (that real leader the Maple Leafs lack) and Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin can meet at centre ice to exchange train sets — and a wink.
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