Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Duck, Duck, Lose on the Toronto Maple Leafs and their coaching situation.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Friedman: “The other thing here about this Toronto situation is, assuming they were going to make a coaching change, is it obvious to you who the next person is?
Marek: “Ahhhh, it’s not obvious.”
Friedman: “I think we’re all wondering, Barry Trotz.
Marek: “The Mike Babcock situation, we all suspected right away if they’re going to make the change it’s going to be Sheldon Keefe coming up from the Marlies. That one was obvious.
There doesn’t seem to be that obvious a replacement, other than the guy you just mentioned a second ago, Barry Trotz, but that’s because he’s been the hot ticket ever since the Islanders let him go.
Friedman: “And you may have heard, he wants to coach an original six team.”
Marek: “Did he mention that? Wow, how did I miss that? Exactly, a secret, yes.”
Friedman: “The thing is though, I think Barry Trotz wants to transition into being a general manager too.
One of the things I’ve heard about Trotz is, and I heard this going all the way back to last summer, he hasn’t gone out of his way to deny it, is he’s looking at a plan that maybe starts with coaching and then goes into GM. That’s what a couple of teams told me.
It’s a little more complex than just a regular coaching hire.
That’s the thing to me is. If it’s not Trotz for argument’s sake, and like I said, going into this weekend, I don’t think a coaching change was on Toronto’s radar. I didn’t. But let’s just say for argument’s sake is, I’m not convinced it’s that simple as, Barry Trotz is our guy. Cause I’d be curious to hear what Trotz would say about how long does he want to coach and does he want to be a manager.
Marek: “Okay Elliotte, it’s one thing to talk about Barry Trotz. That’s all sane and logical and many people had that conversation, but what’s the chaos play here? What would be the wild, wow we didn’t see that coming, holy smokes play here out of the Maple Leafs.
Friedman: “You know they’re still paying Babcock till the end of this year Jeff.
Marek: “wow” “You can’t just leave that and be silent.”
Friedman: “I mean, look, you asked me what the chaos play is. That is the true chaos play.
You know my theory that he’s going to coach again in the NHL, and is no longer a Maple Leaf after this season. That’s the chaos play.
Jeff, there are a lot of veteran coaches out there who would like another shot. Guys like Travis Green to guys like Claude Julien to Alain Vigneault and others. Toronto could simply say, ‘we want someone like that for the rest of the year.’ If they really wanted to do that. That was the other thing I was thinking. I was just trying to imagine if you’re not going with the obvious guy, where are you going if you do decide to do this?
But you know what Jeff, the guy whose opinion I really wonder about, we’re all siting around here wondering about, okay, what does Dubas think? What does Shanahan think? The other guys whose opinion here I wonder about is, what does Jason Spezza think?
Jason Spezza is going to be a player in this front office I think for years to come. We know he takes it seriously. I just wonder how much they’re leaning on him for his thinking. He knows the players. He has really good thoughts about the league. I really wonder if this could be a situation where Spezza’s imprint begins to be made on this organization.
Marek: “The thing I wonder about there, I don’t disagree with you. The thing I wonder about there is, Spezza’s opinion is one thing, how do you think the opinion of the players’ matters in this situation, considering it’s the players that got this team into this situation?
Friedman: “Ideally you’d like to say to the players, ‘Look, you guys aren’t playing well enough therefore you don’t deserve the right to make our decisions for us.’ But we know that is not the way the world works.
Now the thing the players have to worry about here, as a group is, Keefe was brought in because they were unhappy with the previous guy.
It’s sort of what we talked about with Vancouver on Saturday night and that we’ll talk about later on in the podcast, it’s that the Canucks as an organization said, ‘Look, this is two head coaches. If we’re going down this route, we’re also going down the route of changing the roster.’
I think you have to think the possibility of that could exist in Toronto too. The unique challenge here is, they want to sign Matthews as soon as this summer. I believe it was headed in that direction. The only thing they have to worry about is, if for any reason what’s happening changes his mind. And I don’t believe that that’s the case necessarily, but that’s what they have to worry about. He’s in such a powerful position that they do have to consider what he thinks.”
** NHLRumors.com transcription
