The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't replaced Brendan Shanahan with anyone as team president. Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger has been suggested as a replacement.
As the Toronto Maple Leafs try to recover from this disappointing regular season, there have been suggestions that the team should replace former president Brendan Shanahan with one of the players he was famously traded for – Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger.
The rationale from Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons and pundit Sid Seixeiro is that Pronger was a winner everywhere he went as a player, and Pronger's passion for the game would translate into a successful new era for the Leafs with him calling the shots.
We've heard far worse ideas than Pronger being given the reins in Toronto. Since he unofficially retired in 2011, Pronger has worked for the NHL in its Player Safety Department and for the Florida Panthers as a senior advisor to the president of hockey operations. He's been around long enough in various capacities to be an effective hockey team architect.
We've interviewed Pronger many times for The Hockey News, and you always came away from a conversation with him appreciating his knowledge of and passion for the game.
And just as former Leafs GM Brian Burke was a godsend to Toronto media, Pronger would be incredibly entertaining running the Leafs. And really, aren't the Leafs in the entertainment business at the end of the day?
That said, there's a catch: there just doesn't seem to be an interest in having an experienced voice as the president of hockey operations, and it probably wouldn't make a difference.
Last off-season, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley parted ways with Shanahan and didn't hire anyone else to replace him as president.
Pelley also fired Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri and did not replace him. For both teams, their GMs – Brad Treliving for the Maple Leafs and Bobby Webster for the Raptors – are the lead executives of sports operations. There's a business management strategy at play here that can't be denied, and Pelley's board members effectively have endorsed it.
But for argument's sake, let's say Pelley changed course and decided to hire Pronger. The Leafs would get a lot of great PR from the move, but it's not as if Pronger is sitting on a world-changing management strategy of his own, just waiting for some team to let him implement it.
Pronger would essentially face the same challenge in Toronto as anyone tasked with delivering the Leafs a Stanley Cup championship: generating dynamic young talent to sustain this Buds franchise for the long term.
Unless Pronger installs a slew of savvy scouts to build up Toronto's stockpile of talent, it doesn't matter what was on his resume as a player or what type of juicy quotes he gives to media members.
The bottom line here is that the Maple Leafs are at a point in their competitive cycle where they may need to take a step back and start anew with a different core of talent, and that takes time and patience.
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