The Maple Leafs were pretty busy for a day in the middle of August, as the club added a capologist and bolstered their fledgling analytics department, while MLSE Chairman Tim Leiweke deflected rumors that his tenure in Toronto was nearing it’s end.
The club added Brandon Pridham to the fold as an assistant to GM Dave Nonis, whose management staff was reshuffled with the dismissal of Dave Poulin and Claude Loiselle and hiring of Kyle Dubas in late July.
The 40-year-old Stouffville, ON native worked for the NHL since 1999 in their Central Scouting and Central Registry departments mostly having to do with interpretation of the new collective bargaining agreement and the intricacies of the league’s salary cap, which likely makes him a fit to replace Loiselle as the club’s point man for contract negotiations.
Toronto has also started utilizing their budget allocated for the study of statistical examination by hiring a trio of analytics aficionados;
ExtraSkater.com founder Darryl Metcalf, mathematician Rob Pettapiece and freelance columnist Cam Charron.
In the wake of the recent hiring of Tyler “MC79” Dellow by the Edmonton Oilers, speculation regarding Metcalf being hired by an NHL team started last week after
ExtraSkater was pulled down. That suspicion was confirmed by
Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski on Tuesday.
Pettapiece has a wide breadth of experience working as an economic analyst and in baseball analytics and worked with Dubas during his stint with the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds.
Like Dellow with the Oilers, Charron has been a harsh critic of the Leafs, their poor puck possession stats and the team structure under Nonis and Randy Carlyle, which makes you wonder whether an added bonus to hiring him was to shut him up.
According to the Globe and Mail’s
James Mirtle , the Leafs with Dubas heading the newly hired group can take advantage of MLSE’s significant financial resources to develop new means of accumulating data which could exclusively benefit the Leafs.
These additions may alleviate some of the criticism directed at Leafs for their lack of openness to new ways, but it would be wrong to think that the debate is over and done. When the regular season begins, if veterans like Daniel Winnik and Stephane Robidas get more ice time than analytics darlings Nazem Kadri and Jake Gardiner in one game, it will spur the same tired accusations of Carlyle being old-fashioned and close-minded.
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The rumors regarding MLSE Chairman Tim Leiweke’s future in Toronto reached a fever pitch on Tuesday after Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that he would be leaving the company soon.
Leiweke emphatically denied that any departure was imminent, but various reports indicate that “soon” may be following the upcoming season for the Raptors and Maple Leafs.
“I’m committed,” Leiweke said to Toronto Star columnist < http://www.thestar.com/sports/leafs/2014/08/19/mlse_boss_tim_leiweke_clearly_eyeing_exit_door_despite_denials_arthur.html> Bruce Arthur “I’m looking forward to the end of the season with TFC, and the upcoming season with the Raptors and defending our (Atlantic Division) title, and getting the Leafs back in the playoffs. Anyone who thinks that at the end of the day I’m not going to be here through the duration of those seasons, they’re wrong.”
The list of factors range from his family not liking the recent ultra-cold Toronto winter, to the diminishing probability that the Larry Tanenbaum/Edward Rogers/Jon Bon Jovi group succeeding in buying the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, to being frustrated at having to be the buffer between the warring factions of Bell Media and Rogers Communications within the MLSE ownership group.
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