Brad Treliving is frustrated.
With a quarter of the NHL season done, the Toronto Maple Leafs are on a five-game losing streak and just one spot above last in the Atlantic Division.
Treliving, the Maple Leafs’ general manager, spoke to reporters in Toronto Tuesday morning ahead of the club’s matchup with the St. Louis Blues, which sits second last in the Central Division.
“We’re not where we want to be or where we envision to be. Obviously, we’ve underperformed to this point and I take full responsibility,” he said.
“Our record is indicative of how we’ve played. … Obviously 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, but you haven’t played well. I think far too often we haven’t, even in games that we’ve won, we haven’t won the game.”
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Toronto was looking to avoid losing five straight on Saturday against the Chicago Blackhawks, but lost 3-2. The team’s losing skid began on Nov. 8 with a 5-3 loss to the Boston Bruins; the Leafs hold an 8-9-2 record with 19 games played, and sit five games back from first in the division.
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The Leafs have also conceded a division-high 72 goals so far this season.
“We’re not playing connected,” Treliving said.
“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. Conversely, we haven’t done the things that you need to do collectively as a group to prevent the other team from scoring.”
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Head Coach Craig Berube, who coached the Blues to a Stanley Cup in 2019, has emphasized a physically-heavy game plan since taking over the reigns as bench boss last season.
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Treliving said he fully supports Berube, and that when he talks to the players, they believe in him as well.
But it’s the inconsistency on the ice a quarter-way through this season that “keeps me up at night,” Treliving said.
“To me it’s just a commitment to doing the work. … The plan is not a different plan,” he said.
“The style that we want to play is a hard style, but unless you commit to the work, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past. That’s where I see a little bit of the fall off is doing it together, you doing your job so that I can do my job and then committing to the hard parts of the game. That’s where we’ve fallen off right now.”
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Treliving added “you’re not trading your way out of problems” regardless of where the team is at.
“Majority of the problems we have need to be solved within that group. You’re not airlifting in 15 new people. This is their group we’ve got,” he said.
“The job of all of us is to maximize the people that you got and get them to the play at the highest level that they can.”
Puck drop against the Blues is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday in Toronto.
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