GhostofPotvin29
New member
CarltonTheBear said:bustaheims said:Well, the difference there was that Leiweke was the President of MLSE, not the Leafs specifically. He wasn't a hockey guy and shouldn't have had much say in hockey-related decisions, while the MLSE board was there to rubber stamp things and make sure the money was okay. Shanahan, on the other hand, is specifically in charge of the Leafs, and is expected to have input in hockey-related decisions. He's expected to be less concerned about money and newsworthy moves and the kind of things Leiweke was supposed to prioritize, and more concerned about building a team that can actually win.
I do still think that people are reading more into that line than they should have. Shanahan isn't the teams GM. If he wanted to be he could quite easily have that title. His job isn't to oversee every single trade and signing that the team makes. He sets the direction and hands off the responsibilities to the rest of the front office. I'm sure as a brain trust the entire group will make a decision on whether they should trade or re-sign Franson, with Shanahan having a big say there. But if Nonis comes back to Shanahan and says hey I've got a deal all done and ready to go I can't see a situation where Shanny would say "no, I think you could get a 1st instead of a 2nd round pick, go back and do it again".
I've certainly joked myself about Nonis being the assistant GM now but I don't think that's actually the case. This isn't a Sakic/Sherman scenario like in Colorado. Nonis is still the General Manager of this team, and Shanahan clearly trusts him to be in that position and to make the decisions that a GM would, otherwise he would have already been fired. In Boston Chiarelli has a boss in the same situation as Nonis, but nobody thinks that he isn't any less of a GM.
Would Nonis have had to run every deal past Leiweke or someone else prior to Shanahan?