{"id":753865,"date":"2026-06-22T15:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/753865\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T15:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:57:08","slug":"con-artist-or-visionary-chaykas-turbulent-road-to-leafs-gm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/753865\/","title":{"rendered":"Con artist or visionary? Chayka\u2019s turbulent road to Leafs GM"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Chayka<\/a>\u2019s rocky introduction as general manager of the\u00a0Maple Leafs<\/a>\u00a0reverberated through hockey rinks and boardrooms across North America.<\/p>\n

From New York to Saskatchewan and Raleigh, N.C. to Scottsdale, Ariz., people who know him and have worked with him couldn\u2019t believe the words they were hearing to describe him: con artist, charlatan<\/a>. One former executive told the Star he thought Chayka was a \u201cdouchebag.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat could not be further from the John Chayka I know,\u201d said Scott Romanoff, co-managing partner of Franchise Equity Partners, the Manhattan-based company where Chayka was an operating partner leading the sports division.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn is an incredible teammate, a well-rounded individual who was incredibly well-respected and liked from the most junior person on our team to the most senior,\u201d Romanoff said. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t ask for a better colleague.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there were harsh words for the young executive\u00a0\u2014 a 36-year-old married father of three who doesn\u2019t drink, smoke or really have any known vices\u00a0\u2014 getting a second chance in the NHL<\/a> with one of hockey\u2019s most storied franchises after leaving the Arizona Coyotes<\/a> in 2020 in spectacularly messy fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those who defend him believe Chayka is a misunderstood, talented executive who deserves a fair chance with the Leafs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard those things said about him, I just shake my head,\u201d said Gary Drummond, who was part owner of the Coyotes and president of hockey operations when he hired Chayka. \u201cPeople were writing terrible things about him and have never met him, or hardly knew him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more than a little bit annoying and disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who is the real John Chayka?<\/p>\n

His path to the NHL started with a chance meeting between Chayka and Drummond at the 2013 Memorial Cup<\/a> in Saskatoon. Drummond was part owner of the Regina Pats;\u00a0Chayka, a graduate student at Western\u2019s Ivey Business School, had been befriended by Tie Domi, the former Leafs pugilist.<\/a> Chayka\u2019s Stathletes, a hockey analytics company, was in its infancy and, beyond statistics, had a training and nutritional aspect to player development. Domi had Chayka work with his son Max,\u00a0who was playing for London in the tournament. Chayka accompanied the Domis to the Memorial Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to meet John through the Domis, and I was taken aback by how impressive an individual he was,\u201d Drummond said. \u201cAt a young age, how much knowledge he had about hockey, how much vision he had to improve player development\u00a0\u2026 it was captivating. I was extremely impressed, to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drummond joined the Coyotes ownership group shortly after and, during a road trip to Buffalo, convinced then-GM Don Maloney and coach Dave Tippett to have dinner with Chayka.<\/p>\n

NHL teams were beginning to tinker with analytics, measuring players\u2019 performances beyond goals and assists by looking at possession time shot metrics and dropping fancy terms such as expected goals.<\/p>\n

Chayka, co-founder of Stathletes,<\/a> spoke that language. The Stathletes website says it works with 31 leagues in 34 countries, tracking more than 3,500 events per game on more than 30,000 players. Media, agents, trainers and sportsbooks are clients, along with teams and leagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all impressed with him as an individual and what his potential was,\u201d Drummond said. \u201cNot long after that, the team hired him as assistant GM and it flowed from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Youngest GM in NHL history<\/p>\n

A little more than a year later on May 5, 2016, Maloney was out. Chayka took over a Coyotes team that had many challenges, from ever-changing ownership to finding a rink to play in, keeping the team in Arizona, trying to build a winner on a shoestring budget and get to the salary-cap floor with money the owners simply didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

At 26, Chayka was the youngest GM in NHL history. That rubbed some hockey lifers the wrong way. He came across to some as arrogant, as someone who believed he might be the smartest guy in the room, and probably was.<\/p>\n

An early order of business didn\u2019t go well: a conversation with forward Shane Doan, a franchise legend.<\/a> Doan had six goals and 21 assists in 74 games in 2016-17, his lowest output for the team in close to 20 years. Chayka told him over breakfast that spring that the Coyotes wouldn\u2019t be re-signing him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Coyotes would not let him retire on his terms,\u201d Dan Bickley, a radio host and columnist, wrote on Arizonasports.com<\/a>. \u201cIt remains one of the most despicable acts in Arizona sports history.\u201d<\/p>\n

It remains an undertold part of the story that neither Tippett nor anyone from ownership was at that meeting, people Doan might have appreciated hearing from. It was left to Chayka to do the dirty work.<\/p>\n

\"Chayka.JPG\"<\/p>\n

New Maple Leafs General Manager\u00a0John Chayka speaks to the media on May 4, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arlyn McAdorey The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Chayka used outside-the-box thinking with the Coyotes, acquiring dead-money contracts of injured players from teams desperate for salary-cap space. The Florida Panthers sent a young Lawson Crouse to Arizona<\/a> along with Dave Bolland\u2019s $5.5-million (U.S.) salary for next to nothing. Bolland helped the Coyotes get to the floor; Crouse became a valuable contributor.<\/p>\n

The team Chayka took over had missed the playoffs by 20 points. Having committed to a rebuild, it didn\u2019t get much better until 2019, when they missed by four points.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had done a great job there, basically with one hand behind his back,\u201d said Lindsay Hofford, Chayka\u2019s assistant GM from 2018 to 2020. \u201cJohn improved everything. He had installed a recovery area, brought in a chef, the way we travelled was much better. I know players did not want to leave Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a nice place to live, it was run professionally and it was becoming a destination for players because of the hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pressure to win in the 2019-20 season was intense. Veteran forward Phil Kessel<\/a> had been brought in on a bargain contract. Taylor Hall<\/a> was acquired in a mid-season trade and was impressed with what Chayka had built.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I got there, I heard that it was a franchise that didn\u2019t have a lot of money and wasn\u2019t going to treat the players well,\u201d said the 34-year-old Hall, a forward who recently won his first Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes. \u201cWe got treated fantastic there. We had everything we needed. We had zero excuses. Our staff was very good, our facilities were great.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn was on the cutting edge of a lot of different sports science stuff. He had this analytics reputation, but (the) sports physiology department, he was really on top of that and wanted to make sure we were as finely tuned as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The season was halted by the COVID pandemic. That\u2019s when things started to fall apart for Chayka under mercurial owner Alex Meruelo, whose eventual mismanagement of the team was such that it would later play in a 4,600-seat arena on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe before ultimately ceasing operations and selling its assets to interests in Utah.<\/p>\n

Chayka sought jobs with other teams (without permission) and met with undrafted players (a no-no to the NHL). Facing the heat, he resigned and was later suspended for one year by the league, even though he was technically not part of the NHL at the time.<\/p>\n

But the team he built made that summer\u2019s 20-team COVID-bubble post-season. The Coyotes beat the Nashville Predators in the qualification round, then bowed out to the Colorado Avalanche.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he left, they didn\u2019t make the playoffs for five years and the franchise folded,\u201d Hofford said.<\/p>\n

Fresh start\u00a0<\/p>\n

From Arizona, Chayka jumped back into the family business as chief executive officer of JKC Capital, primarily running a stable of Wendy\u2019s franchises in Ontario, and joined Romanoff at Franchise Equity. No one in the financial world balks at analyzing data.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was an incredible thought partner for me,\u201d Romanoff said. \u201cHe really developed, in his short time after hockey, a pretty deep expertise. He mentored a lot of junior people. He really provided a lot of great intellectual capital to what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meghan Chayka, John\u2019s sister and Stathletes co-founder,<\/a> declined to be interviewed directly about her brother. But she did say his hiring continues a positive, progressive trend in hockey, following the hiring of Mehta as GM in New Jersey and Meghan Duggan as GM of the new PWHL team in Hamilton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have worked with a lot of progressing GMs and it seems like, more and more, the NHL is really leaning toward people that want to embrace technology,\u201d Meghan Chayka said. \u201cI don\u2019t see a lot of people with any sort of pushback to analytics or technology that are now rising up the ranks. That\u2019s the general direction of all sports and businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many in hockey believed John Chayka had been blackballed after how everything ended in Arizona, finding himself with few allies.<\/p>\n

Doan, by comparison, is revered in hockey, and it is believed he has little time for Chayka. Doan left the Coyotes organization after that breakfast, joining Hockey Canada, and only returned to the franchise after Chayka\u2019s departure. He also left his front-office role with the Leafs after Chayka\u2019s hiring was announced.<\/p>\n

But Chayka is older now. He\u2019s self-reflective, transparent. At an introductory news conference, he said he took ownership of past mistakes.<\/p>\n

So when his name came up, the hiring seemed inevitable. The people that know him believe his time in Toronto will go well.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo put it in sports parlance, he is an incredible teammate and the ultimate utility player,\u201d Romanoff said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a sponge for information,\u201d Drummond said. \u201cHe\u2019s just interested in people, what they\u2019re doing and why they\u2019re doing it. He\u2019s got an ability to process information and store information. Not just hockey, but finance, politics, human behaviour. He\u2019s a special individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chayka-Sundin\"<\/p>\n

From left, Maple Leafs general manager\u00a0John Chayka, MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley and Leafs senior executive adviser\/hockey operations Mats Sundin at a news conference last month.<\/p>\n

Arlyn McAdorey\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

First moves<\/p>\n

So far, he seems to have the proper reverence for Leafs legend Mats Sundin,<\/a> whose role as a special adviser was announced at the same time. Hiring Judd Brackett as assistant GM in charge of player evaluation will give him a like-minded individual who has a history of melding data-driven insights with traditional drafting strategy.<\/p>\n

What raised an eyebrow was the hiring of Freddie Hamilton (whom he had as a player in Arizona) as chief of staff, a position otherwise unheard of in hockey.\u00a0Hamilton pursued a master\u2019s degree in business administration, and seems uniquely qualified to align the chaos of a hockey organization with Pelley\u2019s vision of the multibillion-dollar organization that is Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.<\/p>\n

Chayka also hit the right notes in meeting with captain Auston Matthews to discuss their vision for the team, along with visiting top prospect Gavin McKenna<\/a> and family in Whitehorse, home of the projected No. 1 pick (owned by the Leafs) in the NHL draft on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been good, honestly,\u201d Chayka told the team\u2019s in-house media on its YouTube channel during the recent draft combine. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of really great people, so that always helps. I have a lot more conviction today than we did a month ago. Mats has been a great partner, very engaged, knows what it means to be a Toronto Maple Leaf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese next three or four weeks are really when it\u2019s time to make some changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The changes he\u2019s made so far have been to mixed reviews.\u00a0The coaching search, he acknowledged, was wide on purpose. He started by speaking to 55 candidates. Many had no chance, but he wanted to hear what they had to say about the team and its prospects.<\/p>\n

He landed on ex-Leafs assistant coach\u00a0Jim Hiller,<\/a> who was on nobody else\u2019s list of candidates. Hiller might be just the under-the-radar hire the team needs, rather than a big personality such as Patrick Roy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree agency is only available to those who make it there,\u201d said Chayka.\u00a0\u201cThe opportunity to secure, in our opinion, the top free agent is an organizational win.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Star, simplified<\/p>\n

Breaking news, interactive polls, video, and voice
\nnotes. Star stories you\u2019ll want to share, delivered where you\u2019re
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The common thread connecting Chayka\u2019s moves to date is that no one saw them coming. He said he likes it that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cInformation is the capital that we all trade on,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving that information stay internal is an important tenet of any great organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The narrative around the Leafs has changed since the season ended. There\u2019s optimism. Winning the draft lottery is one reason, but Chayka\u2019s meticulous approach, designed to get the Leafs back in the playoffs next season, also appears to be winning over critics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people need to give him a chance,\u201d Hall said of Chayka. \u201cBecause you know, when someone gets hired around the NHL and everyone hates it, I think there\u2019s a better chance of it going better than people think.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Chayka\u2019s rocky introduction as general manager of the\u00a0Maple Leafs\u00a0reverberated through hockey rinks and boardrooms across North America.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-753865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}