The man called Shanny is canny and humble
Taking over Leafs means Shanahan has ‘a lot of work’
The Air Canada Centre has hosted so many weddings and funerals over the years: usually one, then eventually the other. A new saviour is introduced, for hockey or for basketball or soccer; some time later, the saviour is buried, in favour of a new direction. The new direction is always exciting, or at least, presented as such.
On Monday, Brendan Shanahan was officially introduced as the new president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was cautious about how he sees the game. He didn’t make specific promises. He correctly said winning the news conference would mean nothing. He came across as smart, canny, ready to embrace the challenge in front of him.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Shanahan said. “A lot of people in the game, a lot of people I respect, a lot of winners, architects of teams, they’re humble guys because they realize how difficult it is to win in the NHL, how everybody is trying to win, how everyone is trying to improve just a little bit.
“So it’s a humbling experience for these guys; it’ll be a humbling experience for me as well.”
And with that, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment truly became Tim Leiweke’s organization. The president and CEO has been on the job for less than a year and has installed new men at the top of all three of his franchises: Masai Ujiri with the Raptors, Tim Bezbatchenko with Toronto FC, and now Shanahan. Leiweke only thought he had two franchises to fix when he got here; the Leafs made the playoffs last season after a lockout-shortened and fairly lucky 48-game season. Pierre LeBrun of TSN and ESPN. com reported Leiweke contacted Wayne Gretzky for the president’s job last summer, but it fell through; during the season, the CEO said he thought the Leafs were fine. As the season crumbled, his thinking evolved.
“If I could have made this decision a year ago I would have done it,” Leiweke said. “I was learning, and maybe there were some notions and some assumptions that came from the playoff run that gave us a bit of a false sense of comfort here. And as we sit here today, guess what? False.
“Part of it is I had to go through a learning process, and if TFC is the sailboat, and ultimately the Raptors are the yacht, the Leafs are a massive cruiser and it takes a lot to turn them around, and it takes a lot to shift strategy. And this is not a task you take lightly. ”
He insisted, however, that this was not a referendum on the collapse, or an indictment of general manager Dave
“It’s a humbling experience for these guys; it’ll be a humbling experience for me as well.”
BRENDAN SHANAHAN
Nonis, who sat at the dais and was a very good soldier as he was relieved of command. Nonis will stay to do the dayto-day work required, but he is not in charge anymore. Leiweke, for his part, says this was part of the plan.
“When I added a couple of years on to (Nonis’s) contract, this was part of the conversation,” Leiweke said. “I believe for an organization this big, as overwhelming as it can be, I was convinced the right (organizational) chart and right structure in order for us to be successful ... he agreed to this.”
So, Nonis spent a year steering this ship knowing he would be superseded? Strange way to do business, but here we are. As he talked about how much work lay ahead for the Leafs, Leiweke pointed to the Raptors and TFC and declared their cultures had been changed; at one point, Leiweke pointed to Shanahan and said, “He’s Masai.” Ujiri is a star, but this season’s Raptors miracle was as much happy fistfuls of luck as it was a grand design, which Ujiri cheerfully admits. TFC is better, but doesn’t appear to be a title team yet. Leiweke came here talking about planning the Stanley Cup parade, and set the bar at championships. So at times, Monday felt like goalpost relocation.
Still, the news conference can’t win or lose the battle. Shanahan indicated he was open to the notion of exploring analytics—he told me and Dave Naylor on TSN 1050 that he spent the plane ride reading up on Corsi and Fenwick, two popular puck-possession metrics — and curiosity from a Hall of Famer is surely welcome. Shanahan didn’t reveal his vision of how the game should be played, but people who know him keep using that word: He had vision, they say. Always has.
The Leafs aren’t close to talented enough to win a Stanley Cup, so vision will be required. But all in all, this is Leiweke’s show now, though who knows for how long. Leiweke talks a lot about how dreadful the winter was, and there are whispers that wrestling with the competing telecommunication giants that own the place is not what you’d call a satisfying experience. Of course, nobody knows just how happy the giants are, either. The notion that Shanahan would be groomed as Leiweke’s successor was floated this week, even if Shanahan is a long way from being the same level of political, hyper-corporate figure. For what it’s worth, when flatly asked if he was searching for a successor, Leiweke laughed.
“No,” he said. “We don’t do that damn parade, I’ll never live it down.”
That’s a lot of winters away, more than likely. Better bundle up.