As Parent Company Pares Back, Maple Leafs Retool Front Office

Massive change is coming to one of the preeminent sports franchises in North America, as well as to its parent company.

The Maple Leafs have completed a leadership change in their hockey operations, bringing back former team captain and franchise icon Mats Sundin as senior executive advisor. It’s a full-time role, and Sundin will be relocating to Toronto for the job. Meanwhile, the NHL team also brought on former Coyotes GM John Chayka as GM. The hires mark the conclusion of a shift that began with the late March firing of former GM Brad Treliving.

Toronto continues to rank as the NHL’s most valuable franchise, with the estimate most recently coming in at $4.4 billion, according to Forbes. Extensive postseason success, however, remains elusive for the Maple Leafs. Despite abundant resources and fan loyalty, the team has not advanced to the conference finals since 2002, and it missed the playoffs entirely this season for the first time since 2016. 

The Maple Leafs’ Stanley Cup championship drought that extends to 1967 is famously the longest active streak in the league—and is one that predates several rounds of league expansion.

“Today is an important day for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization,” said Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment president and CEO Keith Pelley in a statement. “From the start of the process, it’s been about building a championship-caliber team for our fans and our city, and today is an important step towards that goal.”

Chayka, however, is taking the Maple Leafs job with some prior baggage. While with Arizona and in that franchise’s prior incarnation before becoming the Mammoth, Chayka was suspended by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for nearly all of 2021 for conduct detrimental to the league. Chayka was found to have been pursuing jobs with other clubs while still under contract with the Coyotes, and also to have hosted private scouting combines for draft prospects—in violation of league rules and resulting in the forfeiture of several draft picks. 

Those incidents provided a dark coda to what had already been a choppy tenure for Chayka in Arizona. Since then, Chayka has not worked in the NHL, and instead has been CEO of JKC Capital, a family business whose holdings include a series of Wendy’s and Tim Horton’s franchises in Canada. Sundin, though a Hockey Hall of Famer, has no prior front-office experience. 

As a result, the combined lack of pedigree among Chayka and Sundin is likely to amplify the already hefty pressure surrounding the Maple Leafs. 

Corporate Shifts

Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs’ parent company Rogers Communications is pursuing a large-scale transition of its own. As the Canadian telecom giant is developing one of the world’s largest and most powerful sports portfolios, the company said last month it will acquire the 25% of MLSE it doesn’t already own. That long-expected transaction will happen in the second half of this year.

While that happens, Rogers Communications is making about 10,000 of its employees—nearly half of its entire staff—eligible for voluntary buyouts as it seeks significant, though unspecified, reductions. Several parts of the company, including MLB’s Blue Jays and MLSE, won’t be eligible for the buyout program. 

The move, however, comes as Rogers retrenches somewhat after several years of aggressive spending, including gaining majority control in MLSE. Rogers Communications also plans to sell a minority stake in its sports holdings to external investors. 

“We are taking steps to adjust our cost structure to reflect the business realities of the current environment,” Rogers spokesperson Zac Carreiro said in a statement. “As part of this, some teams have chosen to offer voluntary departure and retirement programs to give some employees the choice to decide whether they’d like to stay with the company or begin a new chapter.”