On Feb. 24, just as the NHL was set to restart after the Olympic break, Brad Treliving sat next to Keith Pelley, the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, as the pair watched the Toronto Maple Leafs practice.
And then, weirdly, the general manager mostly disappeared.
Treliving was no longer around the Leafs on a day-to-day basis in March — not at practice, not on road trips. Just gone, it seemed. And now he’s gone as GM, fired in dysfunctional fashion one hour and 23 minutes before the Leafs went for revenge against Radko Gudas and the Ducks in Anaheim.
The timing is the shocking part, and speaks to how the Leafs are being run under Pelley.
The why of it all is not shocking at all. In less than three…