SIMMONS: Shanahan defeated by very Maple Leaf players he supported so avidly
Shanahan’s biggest flaw in management was his inability to create a team in his own image.
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Brendan Shanahan gave everything to his Maple Leafs players — too much money, too much term, too many no-trade contracts, too much power — and all it ended up costing him was his job.
He spoiled them, protected them, babied them with contract after contract and opportunity after opportunity.
He believed in them even as just about everyone else in hockey stopped believing. And then he believed in them some more. He believed in them as he fired general manager after general manager — going from Dave Nonis to Lou Lamoriello to Kyle Dubas, to the current GM, Brad Treliving — and hired coach after coach, the remarkable Mike Babcock signing, followed by Sheldon Keefe and Craig Berube, while keeping the core of his roster together.
He changed coaches and GMs and marginal players until it became his turn to be out the door. All that was officially determined on Thursday when Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment announced that Shanahan would not be rehired as president of the Leafs, putting an end to 11 sometimes remarkable, often successful, usually promising and ultimately unfulfilled years with the hockey club.
Shanahan built everything but a champion with a champion’s payroll, a champion’s budget and the largest, most equipped support staff in hockey history. He pulled just about every string he could — but the final rope was around his throat uncomfortably after the way in which the Maple Leafs ended their recent playoff series against the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
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Losing to the Panthers — that could be expected or even understood. Losing to the Panthers while being blown out at home in Games 5 and 7, by a combined 12-2 drubbing, to a chorus of boos, that was the signal change was needed. And change was clearly on its way.
This is a new era about to begin for Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment. Soon, Edward Rogers and Rogers Communications will have majority ownership of the Leafs. Just as he does with the Blue Jays, the Leafs will become Ed Rogers’ play toy. He has never shown himself to be an owner who gets very involved in the day to day operations of his teams — which has proven to be both his strength and weakness in ownership to date.
Larry Tanenbaum, the longtime chairman of MLSE, has operated as the de-facto owner of the Leafs for years, even while owning just 25% of the franchise. Most players believe him to be the Leafs owner. Now Tanenbaum’s position is about to become superfluous as the Leafs begin anew today, without a team president in place, with the possibility a team president of hockey operations won’t be hired at all.
Some of the answers to those questions will come when MLSE CEO Keith Pelley meets the media on Friday afternoon. It is expected that Pelley — or one of his senior executives — will operate in a president’s role with the Leafs, leaving the day to day hockey operation to general manager Treliving and coach Berube.
Shanahan hired Treliving and was central to the hiring of Berube. And now he’s out the door, they’re here, Auston Matthews remains as captain. A lot of same old, same old in a brave new world for the Leafs.
Yet for nine straight years, which is a highly unusual number for the NHL or any other league, the Leafs under Shanahan made the Stanley Cup playoffs. That was the good and the bad all mixed together in a recipe that didn’t bake quite right. Making the playoffs was splendid. Going nowhere in the playoffs became a curse and a post of derision.
Shanahan’s Leafs played 11 playoff rounds over the past nine seasons. The Leafs won just two of them. The upfront talent, best known as the Core Four — Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares — were four of the 12 highest paid players in hockey. They were hired to be difference makers. In the end, though, they made little playoff difference at all.
Shanahan’s biggest flaw in management was his inability to create a team in his own image. He was a Hall of Fame player bursting with energy and anger, with hands strong enough to score and throw punches, with talent and leadership and fight in his game. And he was an imposing personality, with something to say, who left you with something to think about. But his players, talented as they have been, were nothing like him at all.
The organization protected the players under Shanahan and stood by as they grew more robotic over time and without personality, accepting losing far too easily, losing without putting up enough battle when it mattered most. For all the so-called Shanaplan was, it never succeeded in creating players like Shanahan.
And it needed to do that.
Because whoever takes over the Maple Leafs now, in whatever form, has to create a new mindset for the franchise. Has to build a team that despises losing the way Shanahan the player despised losing. The Leafs need to start over again, playing with bad intentions, playing to win.
Just as Brendan Shanahan began 11 years ago. Only this time, the starting blocks are not so clouded and not so far away. He inherited a mess more than a decade ago and turned it into an almost model franchise.
The key word being almost. Eleven years is a lifetime in professional sport for anyone, and Shanahan was given every dollar and every opportunity to finish the job properly. In the end, he was defeated by the very players he stood by for the past nine seasons. Defeated by them and by his own stubborn resolve in the end.
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