Maple Leafs management on Woll’s future, playoff injuries and coaching search

Alter is coming to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

After a Friday press conference held by group administration, postponed to permit for the primary of those changes to drop — the terminating of head coach Sheldon Keefe prior this week — of that much, able to be beyond any doubt. But with another Maple Leafs campaign misplaced, consigned to being basically another in a developing entirety of post-season dissatisfactions, the address presently is what changes will be made, precisely. How critical the surgery will be on this yearly underwhelming machine.

Taking to the platform Friday, the three central decision-makers presently at the steerage of this venture — Maple Leaf Sports & Excitement president and CEO Keith Pelley, Maple Leafs common chief Brad Treliving, and group president Brendan Shanahan — advertised the blue-and-white loyal a commonplace cadre of low season trademarks:
They will survey and assess, they won’t surge the method, they’re here to win.

Still, the trio did uncover a few clues as to the course the establishment serious to go this low season, and past. As the club’s hunt for arrangements gets underway, here’s a closer see at the key takeaways from the team’s address Friday.

WOLL REMAINS A KEY Portion OF TORONTO’S GOALTENDING PLANS

The 2024 post-season served as something of a microcosm of netminder Joseph Woll’s Maple Leafs residency:
When the 25-year-old was within the cage, he was exceptional, but in the conclusion, wounds prevented him from being within the wrinkle for the foremost vital diversion of the season.

It wasn’t the primary time injuries have held Woll back from coming to his full potential. A third-overall choose who’s awed within the AHL and NHL on various events — and, for a spell, took over as the huge club’s No. 1 alternative this season — Woll’s harm history has a few among the Leafs loyal addressing whether he can be depended upon as the team’s starter moving forward.

On Friday, Treliving proposed the club still sees Woll — who has one year remaining on his current bargain, set to pay him $775,000 another season — as the club’s beginning netminder heading into following season.

“As distant as our goaltending, I’ve got confidence in Joe,” the general manager said. “Now, like everyone else, there are questions. The biggest question with Joe is he’s gotten harmed a part. We have to burrow into that. In some cases that happens, some of the time terrible good fortune happens. Is there a preparing issue that we have to bargain with? Do we got to alter something in his off-ice schedule? All those things are what we need to burrow into.”

As for looming UFA Ilya Samsonov — who battled this season after a standout make a big appearance in Toronto a year prior, but eventually wound up as the club’s No. 1 once more due to Woll’s wounds — Treliving halted short of tossing his bolster behind the 27-year-old returning.

“I believe in Joe as a goaltender. We ought to bolster Joe,” Treliving said. “Ilya’s contract is up, but we certainly have to undertake to put ourselves in a position where we do not have the second-best goaltender in each of these series.”

Whereas there may not be numerous signficiant changes in net, both Treliving and Shanahan proposed Friday that more pivotal changes may well be coming to the Maple Leafs center. With Auston Matthews and William Nylander on the cusp of the to begin with seasons of their recently-signed expansions, all center has moved to Mitch Marner and John Tavares, who will check a combined $21.9 million against the cap another season, some time recently getting to be UFA’s themselves.

“I accept that there are times where you conversation approximately persistence, and I still accept that there are times when persistence is the appropriate call. In any case, when you see patterns continue and the comes about don’t change, you’ve got to alter the way that you just think almost things,” Shanahan said Friday. “We will see at everything this summer, and we’ll consider everything this summer. All with the purposeful of the one thing that we are here for, which is to create the Maple Leafs way better, and to win.”

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That said, Treliving made clear that making exceptional changes to the club’s lineup won’t be a basic handle.

“We’ve got truly great players. But it hasn’t worked,” he said. “You can have the perspective and say, ‘We’ve contributed in four players, we’ve got X sum of our salary cap tied up there, and in case we spread it all around we’re getting to have more depth,’ all these sorts of things — we are where we are, okay? This is often the situation we’re in right presently. Those are really great players.

“We’ve have to be burrow into why we’re finishing up with the same result year after year after year, and alter accordingly.”

TRELIVING SHEDS LIGHT ON Ailment, INJURY THAT SIDELINED MATTHEWS

Among the commonplace issues that have consistently led to the Maple Leafs’ playoff destruction — a sputtering post-season offense and an ineffectual post-season control play — key wounds made things much more regrettable for the club this time around, with Matthews, Nylander and Woll all lost noteworthy time over the course of the seven-game arrangement.

Whereas the club made a point to keep details of said injuries quiet while the arrangement was continuous, Treliving uncovered the details Friday:

Of Matthews, the GM said a potential head harm was the cause of No. 34’s absence from the lineup:
“After Amusement 2, Auston got to be real sick. Our starting thought, with as wiped out as he was, was that it was food harming of some description. It was a infection that stuck with him all through Amusement 3. He suffered a hit in Diversion 4 — and we do not know on the off chance that it was a combination of the sickness, the hit — but he was presenting head harm issues. So, we pulled him, and we weren’t attending to clear him until those things cleared, which they did on the evening of Diversion 7.”

As for Woll, it was a back harm that took him out of the lineup ahead of Amusement 7:
“Joe Woll endured an SI joint sprain, a sprained back, at the completion of Game 6, which made him inaccessible for Game 7.”

Bobby McMann, who came alive for the Leafs down the domestic extend of the normal season but wound up sidelined within the last few diversions of the campaign, missing the playoffs completely, was dealing with a knee harm:
“Bobby McMann endured an MCL sprain during the home diversion against Detroit. … In case the team had made it to the moment circular, McMann would have been available.”

Treliving added that depth forward Connor Dewar experienced bear surgery Friday, and is expected back in time for training camp.

PELLEY Clarifies Basis FOR KEEPING SHANAHAN AS TEAM PRESIDENT

Within the wake of Toronto’s Diversion 7 loss six days ago, hypothesis has whirled with respect to long haul of the decision-makers who have directed the past near-decade of dissatisfaction. With longtime GM Kyle Dubas removed from the organization final year, and Keefe’s residency coming to an conclusion this week, all eyes moved to Shanahan, who’s driven this Maple Leafs extend since 2014.

While numerous among the fanbase questioned whether Shanahan, as well, ought to be expelled from his position given the proceeded string of underwhelming playoff performances, the club president was on hand Friday to once again speak almost the team’s plans moving forward.

Concurring to Pelley, who began his residency as president and CEO of MLSE four weeks ago, it was Shanahan’s history of victory over the aggregate of his big-league career, and his association with Treliving, that permitted him to stay.

“Brendan Shanahan is the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s a champion. He’s a three-time Glass winner,” Pelley said Friday. “What I saw in my four weeks with the two gentlemen beside me showed me that chemistry and solidarity is being built at the most noteworthy levels.”

Afterward comments from Shanahan himself implied at encourage thinking for him remaining as part of the Maple Leafs brain believe, as his history with the team’s current core may be valuable in assessing how to alter it moving forward.

“Brad and Keith are relatively new here, but I am not,” Shanahan said. “And I have seen some of these things over the a long time. I do accept there’s a time for lecturing tolerance, and I do accept there’s a time where you have to be examine a few of the designs that endure. So, everything will be on the table.”

Asked about his contract status, and whether he’s entering the last season of his current bargain, as has been detailed, Shanahan said basically it will not be a distraction for the group.

“I’m not going to get into the subtle elements of my contract. … It’s not a center for me,” he said. “My final contract with the Maple Leafs was not tended to or reestablished until a month some time recently it terminated — it was not a diversion to me at that point, and my contract status will not be a diversion to me or the group now.”

TRELIVING SAYS Group WILL NOT Surge Look For Modern HEAD COACH

Some time recently any changes are made to the program that Toronto will send over the sheets come 2024-25, a choice must first be made on the coach that will lead them.

Within the wake of Keefe’s rejection prior this week, a number of candidates have been drifted — best among those choices seems to be previous St. Louis Blues coach Craig Berube. Be that as it may, with different NHL clubs sitting with vacant head coaching positions, the weight is on for Treliving and Co. to make a move sooner than afterward, to dodge lost out on their favored choice.

Speaking of the coaching look Friday, in spite of the fact that, the common supervisor said the group must adjust acting rapidly with doing their due constancy.

“Listen, there are a few great coaching candidates out there. We proposed to explore them. I’m not going to induce into particular individuals,” Treliving said Friday. “As distant as the timeline, we need to be careful, but we moreover get it there are other openings.”

Treliving moreover famous that the club’s coaching-search handle started only Thursday, with the team’s center having been on the post-season and Keefe’s future.

“I didn’t want to make passionate choices, and it’s been emotional — it still is. I wanted to deal with Sheldon legitimately, and really be clear and think that prepare through, spend some quality time with him, and at that point once that decision was made, get onto the following step. We started that yesterday,” he said. “We’re not waiting, we’re progressing to be careful — this isn’t something that’s progressing to be hurriedly done. But we certainly know that there are some quality candidates out there, and we need to get to them as quick as we conceivably can.”

Whereas group administration didn’t offer any assist data on the kind of coach they will be looking for out, Shanahan did talk to what he felt were key imperfections within the way his group played this past season, hinting at what the club needs moving forward.

“There are regular-season objectives and after that there are playoff goals, and I’m a firm devotee that sometimes playoff goals come from playoff structure and defensive structure, restricting openings against, constraining groups to open things up against you,” Shanahan said whereas speaking of Toronto’s proceeded hostile battles within the post-season. “It’s a question of coaching, it’s a address of informing, and it’s too a question of personnel. When the playoffs come, we do not get the goals that we’ve been getting within the standard season, so how do we alter that?”

“It isn’t add up to objectives, it’s how the goals are scored within the playoffs,” Treliving included. “You score in an unexpected way in the playoffs than you are doing within the standard season. So, is it systematic? Is it