Breaking down the highs and lows of the Maple Leafs’ Shanaplan era
The Toronto Maple Leafs made a significant shift on Thursday, announcing that Brendan Shanahan would not return as team president after they fell out of the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs in Game 7 against the Florida Panthers.
Heading into an offseason without Shanahan for the first time since he was hired in 2014, the Maple Leafs find themselves in a very different spot, but without much success in the postseason.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli discussed how the Shanahan era will be remembered in Toronto.
Yaremchuk: It puts an end to the Shanaplan. On the one hand, I think if you had told Maple Leafs fans back when he was hired 11 seasons ago that you’re going to make the playoffs in nine of the next 11 seasons, they probably would have said that is tremendous. That’s a win.
The fact that it’s only the two playoff rounds, and the playoff record is eight games below .500. I know there was technically a North Division title in there, so I call it two division titles in 11 years. They won the Atlantic, obviously just the one time. How would you sum up Shanahan’s tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs?
Seravalli: It’s a mixed bag. Shanahan deserves a lot of credit for turning around the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. From the beginning of the salary cap era, the Maple Leafs were a laughing stock.
Think about all the coaches they had run through, the Phil Kessel era and all those other things that came with it. It was a really difficult time to be a fan of the Leafs, and with the way that he came in and righted the ship, restored really important cultural pieces, and made the Leafs a proud franchise that everyone can rally around in that market, it has been incredibly impactful.
There’s no doubt that he put them on a much better path to success when it comes to the things that have played out over these last nine consecutive years in the playoffs. But to me, the big flaw goes back to the North Division, the year they blew the 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens. It stands out as a moment in time where there probably should have been a bigger call to action to change the core of the team and the makeup of this team.
It was too much, too long, too comfortable, and part of that is due to an unwavering belief that he had in the group to get it done, which I can admire from a certain perspective. Still, just because you keep ramming your head against the cinder block wall, it doesn’t mean you’ll break through eventually. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t, and in this case, that faith, that trust, that overbelief in this Toronto Maple Leafs core is what caused Shanahan to lose his job in the end.
Just for comparison sake, the Vancouver Canucks missed six playoff appearances compared to the Leafs in that exact amount of time, and they have won more rounds. Is anyone in Vancouver sitting back saying [they] are the model franchise, and look at all the success? As hopeful as they’ve been, there’s not much to hang their hat on, and I think that’s where they’re kind of left at this moment in time, trying to figure out how to get there.
You can catch the rest of the Maple Leafs segment and Friday’s show here…