The Toronto Maple Leafs are expected to announce their new management team at a press conference on Monday.
According to longtime sports reporter Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun, the Maple Leafs will announce their new management team Monday, featuring Maple Leafs legend Mats Sundin and former Arizona Coyotes GM John Chayka leading it.
“Expect the Maple Leafs to have a press conference Monday to announce the executive team of Mats Sundin and John Chayka to run the hockey club,” Simmons wrote on X.
Mats Sundin Expected to be Team President
It is not yet officially known what the structure of this new management team will be, but the rumors are that Sundin is being brought in to be the team president. He will essentially act as a bridge between Chayka as the GM below him and MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley above him. The Maple Leafs previously had fellow Hockey Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan in the team president’s role, but after they fired him in 2025, the team went without a president last year. Instead, it was GM Brad Treliving running the show, and the results were disastrous, as the team missed the playoffs, which ended up costing Treliving his job.
Sundin, meanwhile, is a Maple Leafs legend, and his return to the franchise is sure to draw plenty of excitement from the fans. Between 1994 and 2007, Sundin starred for the Maple Leafs, and he was the team captain for many of those years. He is one of the greatest hockey players of all time, and arguably the greatest player in franchise history, so his return to Toronto is very exciting. That being said, he has no previous NHL management experience to speak of, so it will be interesting to see how he performs in his new expected role as the team’s president.
John Chayka Gets Second Chance as NHL GM
Chayka, meanwhile, was the GM of the Arizona Coyotes from 2016 to 2020 before he stepped away from the role. He was only 26 years old when he was first hired, becoming the youngest GM in NHL history in the process. The Coyotes did not perform well under Chayka’s leadership, and eventually, the team moved to Salt Lake City to become the Utah Mammoth. But at age 36, the hope is that Chayka has matured and is ready to lead an NHL team for a second time.
One of the reasons the Leafs were so interested in Chayka is due to his analytics background, as he was one of the first hockey GMs to really push analytics in the sport. Things may not have played out the way he wanted in Arizona his first time around, but he’s clearly a very bright man and was able to wow over Pelley and the MLSE brass to get this second opportunity in the NHL. With Sundin above him, the hope is that there will be enough checks and balances in place that Chayka won’t be able to make the same mistakes that he once did in the desert.
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