SIMMONS: Challenge for very honest Brad Treliving is finding a way to change Leafs' DNA

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Brad Treliving is fully aware of all that needs to be done.

Accomplishing it – and pulling it off over the next few months – is now the gigantic challenge for the general manager of the Maple Leafs, now in total control of the Toronto hockey operation.

Treliving hit on two significant areas of contention in his shockingly candid end-of-season, beginning-of-off-season media availability Thursday morning.

He said the Leafs need a new and stronger mindset as a team.

He said the Leafs require an alteration to their group DNA.

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He made both those points after doing his first deep-dive on the Leafs playoff elimination — and all that has gone on emotionally since.

It has been a rather tumultuous time since the Leafs eliminated themselves in Game 7 of the second round the Stanley Cup playoffs some 10 days ago.

The long-standing team president, Brendan Shanahan, has been fired. Shanahan hired Treliving to be GM. Now, Treliving is the senior hockey executive with a new boss to get to know in Keith Pelley.

There’s an emotional side to all of this, relationships and all, watching your team fail, hoping for more and getting less, seeing the man who hired you, your close friend, let go.

And all this, with a hockey club that led the indestructible Stanley Cup champions 2-0 in their playoff round and had a 3-1 lead in the third period of Game 3. They had everything going their way momentarily, until it wasn’t.

And then Game 7 hit — after the sucker punch that was Game 5 — and your head starts spinning and your mind starts racing. You watch the replays over and over again, slowing them down and speeding them up, and you try and make sense of what doesn’t always make sense.

This is the life of every general manager in every sport. It is Treliving’s existence now with concepts to juggle, but no real way of altering the two largest long-term failings of the Maple Leafs.

The more equipped the Leafs have been to win in the playoffs, the more the ending has hurt.

All this coming at a time when leading point-getter Mitch Marner is up for free agency and long-time stalwart John Tavares is in the same situation. Tavares wants to return. Marner hasn’t been so certain with his words.

How can you live with them or without them? In the final four games of the Florida series, three of them defeats, Marner had but one assist, Tavares offered up no points at all.

Max Domi had three points. Bobby McMann had two. Fellow free agent and fourth-liner Steven Lorentz tied with Marner with one point.

Treliving has to more than tweak his roster, but to change who and how and where, those are the biggest issues here.

And with no-trade contracts attached to his three highest-paid signed players, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly.

Changing team DNA and club mindset almost link to each other: If you fix one, you probably fix the other.

Treliving spoke rather honestly Thursday about how the Leafs froze when the playoff moments got too big for them. They couldn’t find a way to win Game 3 with the two-goal lead in the second period. They couldn’t find a way to compete in Game 5. And they couldn’t find their game at all once they got behind 1-0 in the second period of Game 7.

The final-game collapse wasn’t just sudden. It was shocking, And it was horribly revealing.

The best players in almost every team sport talk about the game slowing down for them when they are their best.

You saw that last summer in the Olympics with Steph Curry and the U.S. men’s basketball team.

You saw it below the goal line in Game 5 in Carolina, a very competitive Stanley Cup playoff game, when Sasha Barkov got the puck in deep, made one move without space, then another, before sliding the puck to Carter Verhaeghe, who scored the series-winning goal against the Hurricanes.

That’s the Panthers DNA bursting through at the most important time. That’s their team mindset: They won’t defeat themselves.

That’s what the Leafs are missing.

There’s not a lot of difference between captain Barkov and captain Matthews when it comes to overall talent. They’re both highly skilled, world-class players with defensive acumen. They’re both game-changing kind of performers.

The play Barkov made on the series-winning goal was sensational. Winners do sensational things at sensational times. That’s what makes them what they are.

Treliving is a big believer in Matthews — he has to be, doesn’t he? But the mindset that needs to change, the club DNA, has to start with the captain among players and work its way through the entire lineup.

How do you lose Marner from a team in need and still find a way to get better? That’s Treliving’s off-season mountain to climb. It won’t be a one player for one player swap. It may take a creative signing or a creative trade or two.

The Leafs have a lot you can build with even if you lose Marner’s 102 points. The team is pretty much set in goal with Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll for the coming season. The entire defence is signed, though Treliving would probably like to add a puck-moving rearguard.

It’s up front where there are so many questions. With the likelihood of Marner leaving. With uncertainty being their calling card until next year’s roster takes shape.

Treliving spoke a lot about critical moments in games.

“Champions are the calmest at the most critical time,” he said.

The way Barkov was calm late in the third period against Carolina.

“I felt a team tightness,” Treliving said of the Leafs getting behind a goal in Game 7.

He felt it. We saw it.

Now, how to fix it?

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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