Brendan Shanahan Gone As Toronto Maple Leafs President After 11 Years

The Shana-Plan era is over in Toronto. After 11 seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced Thursday that the contract of team president Brendan Shanahan will not be renewed after it expires on June 30.

“Brendan is one of the most respected leaders in the game and he has instilled many of the traits that were the signature of his Hall of Fame career throughout the organization, uniting this storied franchise in the ‘Honour, Pride and Courage’ that it was founded on,” said Keith Pelley, the president and CEO of parent company Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment. “Our responsibility and driving motivation, however, is to add a new chapter to the Maple Leafs’ championship history, and it was determined that a new voice was required to take the team to the next level in the years ahead.”

The announcement comes four days after the Maple Leafs were eliminated from the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 6-1 Game 7 loss to the defending champion Florida Panthers.

A native of Mimico, Ont. and a three-time Stanley Cup winner with the Detroit Red Wings, Shanahan’s decision to join the Maple Leafs in 2014 signalled a new era for a franchise which is the NHL’s most valuable, but has struggled to achieve post-season success. The Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967, months before the NHL expanded from six to 12 teams. They haven’t been back to the final since.

When Shanahan arrived, Toronto had missed the playoffs in eight of the previous nine seasons. After one year, he re-vamped the front office by hiring Lou Lamoriello as general manager along with Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter as assistants, and lured coach Mike Babcock to Toronto with an eight year, $50-million contract that set a new standard for NHL coaching compensation.

And after the Leafs’ used their first-round draft pick in 2014 to select William Nylander eighth overall, then added home-grown Mitch Marner with the No. 4 pick in 2015, a draft lottery win in 2016 allowed them to acquire generational talent Auston Matthews — a three-time Rocket Richard Trophy winner and league MVP in 2021-22, who also took over the captaincy last summer.

The Leafs returned to the playoffs in Matthews’ rookie year, and have been back every year since — now holding the NHL’s longest streak of consecutive post-season appearances at nine years. But despite consistent regular-season success, playoff results have remained elusive. Toronto has reached the second round just twice in those nine years, and never gone farther. With each passing year, the angst and frustration within the organization and among the massive, rabid fanbase grows stronger.

In 2018, the organization parted ways with Lamoriello in order to promote Dubas to general manager. He moved on in 2023 and last year, the Leafs cut ties with Babcock’s coaching successor, Sheldon Keefe.

Cup-winning coach Craig Berube was brought in with the hope that he’d teach the team how to win in the playoffs, and a major re-vamp of the defense and goaltending made the Leafs tougher to play against.

But in the end, the result was the same. And after the one-time Rogers Media president Pelley was installed as the head man at the parent company in April of 2024, more change was all but inevitable.

“While I am proud of the rebuild we embarked on starting in 2014, ultimately, I came here to help win the Stanley Cup, and we did not,” Shanahan said in a statement on Thursday. “There is nothing more I wanted to deliver to our fans, and my biggest regret is that we could not finish the job.”

Roster changes are also likely in Toronto this summer, particularly with key forwards Marner and former captain John Tavares both set to become unrestricted free agents on July 1. Both players are Toronto natives who have repeatedly professed their desire to stay. That may be easier to accomplish for Tavares, who will see a drop in his $11 million salary-cap hit on his next deal at age 34. Marner, 28, is believed to be looking for a raise from the $10.903 million cap hit that he has commanded for the last six seasons.

The Brendan Shanahan move was telegraphed on Wednesday, when work leaked out that the Leafs had granted the New York Islanders permission to speak to him about a management opening. The Islanders hold the top pick in the upcoming 2025 NHL draft thanks to a lottery win. In April, the team decided not to continue with Lamoriello, who had been the team’s general manager and president of hockey operations since leaving Toronto in 2018.