It’s status quo, until the wind blows

MLSE can promise hands-off approach, but Leafs will tempt

Richard Peddie, standing in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel in January 2008, was asked if the team’s embattled general manager, John Ferguson Jr., still had the ability to make a coaching change if he felt it was necessary. “No,” was Peddie’s straightforward answer. Ferguson would be fired soon after. Peddie had accompanied the team on that trip to California to oversee matters, and to evaluate a deteriorating situation. It was, in many ways, the height of his power as CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertain- ment, a moment at which he was more in charge of the hockey club that Conn Smythe founded and built than any member of the hockey department.

Ferguson’s father had been a famous player, coach and GM, and he had played pro and came from deep hockey roots. Peddie was an accomplished businessman who, depending on who’s counting, saw the value of MLSE at least triple over his 14 years at the helm and expand its tentacles to many new business enterprises.

By that conversation in L.A., the suit was calling the shots and was clearly far more powerful than the hockey guy, different from even the days when Ken Dryden and Cliff Fletcher were in charge.

It had just evolved that way. The team’s philosophy had become not necessarily to pursue championships, but to aim for one round of home playoff dates every spring, and budget for that.

Keep that story in mind, folks, as MLSE tries to assure one and all that the newest CEO, Michael Friisdahl, isn’t about to get involved with the Maple Leafs, Raptors or even Toronto FC in the same way his predecessor, Tim Leiweke, was.

I remember a quarter century ago when Rosanne Rocchi, Harold Ballard’s savvy lawyer, was heavily involved in many key decisions involving the Leafs as Ballard lived through his final days.

Donald Crump, one of Ballard’s exec- utors, wielded influence for a time, jousting for position with another executor, Don Giffin. Brian Bellmore, Steve Stavro’s lawyer, gained extraordinary influence during the late 1990s.

Peddie didn’t start out in charge. He gained power over the years.

The Leafs, despite their lack of success in terms of winning Stanley Cups, remain a glittering jewel on the Canadian sports scene. The Hope Diamond of sports, Rocchi once called it. Ambitious people are drawn to the franchise, and often see themselves as power brokers as the sands of power shift, as they always seem to shift.

The plan is for Leafs president Brendan Shanahan and Raptors president and GM Masai Ujiri to continue to report directly to the MLSE board. That’s been the way things have been done ever since Leiweke announced he was leaving. Shanahan made the call on firing Dave Nonis, on dismissing a long list of scouts, on pulling the trigger on the Phil Kessel deal, on hiring Mike Babcock. A hockey guy making hockey decisions, going to the board for approval when necessary.

Friisdahl has been hired for his business expertise, and the idea is he’ll leave the sports decisions to the experts, Shanahan and Ujiri and TFC’s Tim Bezbatchenko.

Good plan. And that may well be the way it all works over time.

That said, sometimes things change abruptly around this sports conglomerate, like when Stavro sold

Choosing a course has never been a problem for the Leafs. Staying the course has always been the problem

out to the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund, or when Brian Burke was axed, and sometimes they change almost imperceptibly, like water seeping unnoticed into a basement. Suits bring sponsors to the dressing room to show off a little, discussions of the direction of the teams or the decisions made take place at cocktail parties far from the boardrooms, and people who started out as neophytes begin to see themselves as experts worthy of input.

It’s hard to exactly understand the relationship between co-owners Bell and Rogers at MLSE, something Leiweke had to manage as a buffer between the board and the teams. But the positive strides made by the Raptors and, in a different way, by the Leafs seem to be the result of the two communications rivals either working better together than expected or somehow neutralizing the worst instincts of the other.

Rogers is being hammered for hiring Mark Shapiro, an experienced baseball executive, now that it has resulted in the departure of Alex Anthopoulos. But the same corporation owns 37.5 per cent of MLSE, and Friisdahl is almost the opposite of Shapiro. Very different decisions.

Over time, of course, Friisdahl will become very involved in a variety of ways, and at the same time the Rogers/Bell relationship will continue to evolve, and probably change. Rogers or Bell could decide to sell their chunk at some point. Bell and minority MLSE owner Larry Tanenbaum have bought the Argos and will soon make that a priority.

In other words, this is not a static situation. Today is just today, not necessarily tomorrow.

The Raptors seem on a solid path right now. The Leafs have made the commitment to a slow growth approach that promises to be painful but could produce a sustainable period of success.

Remember, though, choosing a course has never been a problem for the Leafs.

Staying the course has always been the problem.

The hiring of Lou Lamoriello, who learned how to manage George Steinbrenner and a multi-sport structure with the YankeeNets organization, was done in part to try to make the hockey club more focussed and disciplined, and therefore less affected by the changing winds and notions of ownership. Shanahan gained extraordinary insights into how all 30 NHL clubs are operated during his years at NHL headquarters, and he un- derstands hockey franchises are often susceptible to influences and temptations that ordinary businesses are not.

It’s one thing to struggle now and say the Leafs are committed to a logical rebuild, and quite another to stay committed two years down the road when wins are still outnumbered by losses and the ownership balance changes, or somebody whispers in the ear of somebody on the board that it doesn’t have to be this way, that there’s a faster way to produce a winner, sell more merchandise and improve TV ratings. That’s all it takes. That’s what Leaf history makes very, very clear. Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column appears here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.