Keith Pelley Hires John Chayka, Mats Sundin in Leafs Gm Move
Keith Pelley’s leafs gm move landed John Chayka and Mats Sundin in the Toronto Maple Leafs front office in late March. Pelley called it the most important decision of his tenure at MLSE, and the hire immediately put the club’s structure under a sharper lens.
Keith Pelley and the Leafs
Pelley said, “At the end of the day, this is the most important decision that I will likely make in my tenure at MLSE.” He placed Chayka as general manager and Sundin as senior executive adviser of hockey operations, a pairing that gives the Maple Leafs a new decision-making group at the top.
The move comes after a chaotic season and the dismissals of Kyle Dubas and Brendan Shanahan. For a franchise trying to win its first Stanley Cup title in almost 60 years, the front office itself has become the central hockey issue, not just the roster on the ice.
John Chayka’s Coyotes run
Chayka’s path back to the NHL is unusual. He had not been in the league since he was suspended by the commissioner five years earlier after a run with the Arizona Coyotes, and no NHL team had hired him in any capacity before Toronto did.
He became the youngest GM in pro sports history at age 26 after being brought in as an inexperienced assistant GM in 2015. The Coyotes finished with 70 points in his first season as GM, then 70 points again in his second, and missed the playoffs in both years before missing again in his third season.
By the time the 2019-20 season was halted by COVID-19, Arizona was 11th in the Western Conference. Chayka quit shortly before the NHL resumed play for the playoffs, and the Coyotes later forfeited first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts after violating the league’s draft combine testing policy while he was in charge.
Gary Bettman and Sundin
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Chayka “breached his obligation to the club” when he reportedly pursued opportunities with other NHL teams while still employed by the Coyotes. The league suspended him for conduct detrimental to the league in early 2021, and 25 general managers were hired during the time he was out of a team job.
Sundin brings a different kind of background. He has never run an NHL team and has not been around the team or league for nearly 20 years, which makes his role in hockey operations one of the more unconventional pieces of the hire.
That leaves the Leafs with a front office built around two people who arrived with very different histories and equally large questions attached. The immediate answer is clear: Pelley has chosen them to shape the organization now, and the pressure attached to that choice starts with how quickly they can steady a club that has spent too long changing direction.
