Pelley In A Pinch: Go Full Retread Or Blast From The Past With Mike Gillis?

Toronto Bar Advertisement: “Free beer and food during the Maple Leafs postseason schedule”— the day after Toronto missed the playoffs.

In hockey circles they say that crushers who want to become rushers soon find themselves as ushers. The same thing might be true of team executives who listen to fans. Soon they’re sitting with them.

Never is this better illustrated than in the recent firing of Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving. With the Buds missing the post season— after being a preseason favourite of some to win the Eastern Conference— the firing is hardly surprising. Toronto finds its salary cap almost maxed out, its draft capital traded away (just two 2026 picks in top 5 rounds) and its farm system thin. 

To say nothing of a head coach hired by the previous GM doing the dead coach walking behind the Leafs bench. The looming question? Should Toronto re-tool or rebuild? That’s what Leafs Nation wanted to hear from MLSE CEO Keith Pelley last week as he met the media horde to discuss firing Treliving. 

Bear in mind that Pelley— who’s been on the job since January of 2024— is not a talent evaluator or a former coach/GM. He’s a business and broadcast  executive who has run TSN, Sportsnet, the Toronto Argonauts and the European Golf Tour as an administrator. Still there was an expectation that he might get into the weeds on personnel. 

Wisely or not, Pelley fed the press and fans some red meat, proclaiming that the person he hires to run the luckless Leafs will be asked to do a retool— not a rebuild, This led to howls of indignation from the media and fans who want Toronto to scuttle the high-priced lineup led by injured captain Auston Matthews that had failed to advance to the semifinals, let alone the finals, since the Core Four was anointed.  Okay, since 2002, but who’s counting?

Others nitpicked Pelley’s use of the term draft “choices” when hockey cognoscenti call them “picks”. And so on. (Because if it’s a Toronto problem it’s a national problem.) If Pelley’s aim was to take the responsibility on his own shoulders he did so, by outlining the profile of the person he’s about to hire. 

What almost all seem to agree is that Toronto needs to take a bold step in choosing its next president/ GM. Or whether it should be two separate hires. 

If you’re looking for that job description one controversial name quickly comes to the fore: Mike Gillis. A former first-round choice, sixth overall of the Colorado Rockies in 1978, a notable player agent (Pavel Bure, Bobby Holik, Markus Naslund) and the man who ran the Vancouver Canucks for the six most successful seasons in club history 2008-2013. Under Gillis the Canucks came within a game of winning the 2011 Stanley Cup, while also winning the Presidents Cup twice and the Northwest Division five consecutive years.

But the results are only part of the story. The Gillis formula in Vancouver often set traditional thinking on its head. Assessing that in a league with 30 teams (now 32) looking for conventional answers only leads a team to stagnate, Gillis overhauled the Canucks travel, their training programs and their scouting (current Leaf Chris Tanev was one notable free-agent find). His player-friendly approach, honed as an agent, allowed Vancouver to retain loyal players and attract new talent.

The success of the Canucks with the Sedin twins, Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows and Kevin Bieksa (among others) was not due to a charm offensive. Under Gillis the Canucks were a swaggering, self-assured squad loathed in many quarters. Gillis himself was taciturn, brusque and, at times, hostile to the media. He didn’t hide his disdain for business-as-usual around Gary Bettman’s league. There were many in the NHL community who enjoyed the demise of Gillis and the Canucks’ of that era.

Eventually the failure to win the city’s first Stanley Cup and the lingering drama over trading fan favourite Roberto Luongo took its toll. Francesco Aquilini, the owner who’d taken the risk with Gillis, succumbed to fans’ impatience and dumped Gillis’ development plan in favour of Canuck legend Trevor Linden. Whatever it brought Aqulini in the short term, hiring Linden and a steady lineup of other GMs has left Vancouver the worst team in the NHL as 2025-26 winds up. 

We had a front-row seat for that six-year stretch, researching our book Ice Storm: The Rise & Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canuck Team Ever (Amazon Kindle, brucedowbigginbooks.ca). We saw it close-up from the excitement of Gills’ 2008 arrival; to the heartbreak of the 2011 loss and riot afterward; to his disheartening dismissal after finally trading Luongo. We saw the many people in front of the public and behind the scenes who made it a great story. 

Many expected him to return shortly after being fired, but Gillis was adamants about his conditions for returning to an all-consuming job running an NHL franchise. He’d settled in Victoria, B.C., and was enjoying a comfortable life as a consultant and a grandfather. He was going to be picky. Any team that employed him was going to have to subscribe to his specific requirements. 

Compensation would be important for the Toronto native; but employing his plans for scouting, player evaluation and training methods— which had been curtailed in Vancouver— was equally crucial. He’s also stressed that he wants to be a president/ CEO who would hire a separate GM to use the latest innovations to gain an edge. And to use the Leafs’ abundant finances to hire resources far and wide.

In conversations since that time and in proposals he made for other teams who thought of hiring him, Gillis has emphasized the importance of analytics and a specific power structure. For instance, he wants to see two separate scouting staffs within the team to eliminate same-think. In the Athletic, James Mirtle does an examination of the 2021 proposal Gillis prepared for Pittsburgh before they disastrously war with Brian Burke and Ron Hextall. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7166409/2026/04/02/maple-leafs-mike-gillis-nhl/

Gillis knows Pelley from his time as an NHL governor when Pelley was a broadcast executive purchasing the Canucks TV rights. While there could hardly be described as friends they have a platform to discuss any options with Gillis on the board of the TML charitable trust. 

In his 2021 proposal Gillis described his model as “best-in-class, championship organization on and off the ice.” We are guessing that sounds just about right for Leafs Nation. We’ll know by the June amateur draft if that’s the Leafs’ formula, too.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 his previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700