Treliving fielded questions from reporters on Tuesday morning ahead of a matchup against the St. Louis Blues.
Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving stepped in front of the cameras on Tuesday morning for his quarter-season media availability and took the blame for the team's difficult start to the season.
The Maple Leafs started the season in a good spot, winning five of their first 10 games. Since then, Toronto has won three of its last nine games and is currently attempting to recover from a five-game losing streak.
"As we sit here today, we're not where we want to be or where we envision to be," Treliving said. "Obviously, we've underperformed to this point, and I take full responsibility. I'm in charge of the hockey department. I've put the people in place on the ice, off the ice, so the responsibility lies with myself."
Toronto hasn't been a consistent team early this year. They've won games, but on the day Treliving addressed the media, the Maple Leafs sit tied for last in the Eastern Conference with the Buffalo Sabres.
"I think as we sit here today, our record is indicative of how we've played," Treliving added. "We're in the results business, but there's nights that you play well and lose. There's nights that you just score more than the opponent, right? But I think far too often we haven't, even in games that we've won, we haven't won the game. Sometimes we've scored more goals."
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Not only are the Maple Leafs not playing well defensively, but they're not connected as a group, Toronto's GM said.
"And that's on our whole group, from our goaltending right through our whole group. We've given up too much defensively. That wasn't this team last year, right? So we've given up too much defensively. We're not playing connected.
"And when I talk about connected, it's on both sides of the puck, right? Generating offense. We've scored goals. But to me, we haven't done the things that you need to do to generate offense on a regular basis."
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Treliving wants his group to come alive. The vibes around the team were strong last season. The Maple Leafs GM wants to see that again.
"I think there's been too much vanilla with our team," Treliving said.
"And that's a big part of what you try to establish your team is what it's going to look like on a nightly basis, right? When you're going well, you have a really good indication, there's going to be good nights and bad nights. But you have a pretty good idea how it's going to look like from night to night.
"A large part of the frustration is you don't know how it's going to look like, right? It's been in spurts, it's been in periods, it's been within periods. I think you can count on one hand how many full complete games we've had. So that's a big part of it is going back to how do we want to look like and trying to get to look like that on a more consistent basis."
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