Pelley related culture to the Toronto Blue Jays, who made a World Series run at the beginning of the Maple Leafs' season last fall.
If there's one thing MLSE (Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment) CEO and president Keith Pelley wants the Toronto Maple Leafs to have, it's a good culture.
He spoke about exactly that nearly one year ago at his press conference following the dismissal of Maple Leafs president, Brendan Shanahan.
"I'm saying we made a lot of progress under (Brad Treliving) and we made a lot of progress under (Craig Berube). I think you'll all agree that Chief changed the culture," Pelley said of the culture last spring.
"Now, we're going to make another step, and as I said, winning is about hoisting championships, and that's our goal."
What happened next was no hiring of a president of hockey ops, a summer filled with trades to acquire players like Nicolas Roy, Dakota Joshua, and Matias Maccelli, all of whom were players the Maple Leafs hoped would return to their former form.
As we know now, Roy was traded at the deadline to the Colorado Avalanche for a conditional 2027 first-round pick and a 2026 fifth-round pick. Joshua dealt with a mid-season injury, which no doubt slowed production. Maccelli struggled to produce anything until after the Olympics.
(Since Feb. 25, Maccelli has the fourth-most points on Toronto, with 13 in his last 18 games.)
Toronto isn't going to make the playoffs. Nor does it look like they want to get a top-five pick in this year's draft, with both their play and Pelley's comments about tanking on Tuesday afternoon.
The team is also one day removed from another emotion-filled game against the Anaheim Ducks, which featured Max Domi fighting defenseman Radko Gudas for what transpired almost three weeks earlier: a knee from Gudas to Auston Matthews, ending his season.
It was a difficult image on what was a Thursday night inside Scotiabank Arena: Matthews, on the ice in pain, while Gudas skated to the penalty box unharmed because none of the forward's teammates stood up to the defenseman.
It was a failure on Matthews' teammates. But also, it was a failure of the culture that was apparently built over the last few seasons under Pelley's watch.
Now, Pelley is left hoping Treliving's successor can come in and change the culture even more.
"Without the right structure. Without the right processes in place. Without the right culture. Without the alignment and the accountability among everybody inside the operation, we will not be successful," Pelley said.
"That change starts today."
The word culture can be a loaded expression, though. Many might have different opinions on what culture means and how to form it. Certainly, culture is built from the top down.
But to Pelley, what does the word "culture" mean?
"I think culture is as simple as you wake up in the morning and you're really excited to go to work. You know that the people that you work with, you can have any kind of type of conversation with. You have more laughs than you are sad," Pelley said.
"There are so many different ways to identify culture. And as I said, you can't necessarily manufacture it, but you can put the pillars in place so that it happens organically.
"You saw it last year with the Blue Jays. They had all the pillars in place. The pillars of being able to have open conversations. The pillars of having accountability. The pillars of having a team ethos, what you stand for, what you believe in.
"What wearing that Toronto Maple Leafs jersey means. All of that leads to the culture.
"Some of the things that happened this year shouldn't happen in the Leafs culture, and it won't going forward."
Let's see if that "culture" changes as we look towards next season.