Brendan Shanahan stands behind ‘Shanaplan,’ says he still hopes it pays off for Maple Leafs

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TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs may have moved on from Brendan Shanahan, but the team’s former president can’t quit them.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the organization parted ways with him on May 22, Shanahan took the high road when interviewed for the fourth episode of the newly released season of “Faceoff: Inside the NHL” docuseries on Prime Video.

“Sure, you’re going to have decisions that you’d like to have back, but I think what we’ve built, I’m confident that they can still get the job done,” Shanahan said. “Unfortunately, I won’t be around to see it finished, but it would give me a lot of joy to see them finish it.”

Shanahan grew up a diehard Leafs fan in Mimico, a pocket of the city adjacent to the team’s current practice facility. He went on to a 21-year NHL playing career that landed him in the Hockey Hall of Fame before getting hired away from an executive role in the league office to become Leafs president in 2014.

The organization was in dire straits at that stage, and Shanahan oversaw a transformation that’s seen the Leafs become a perennial Stanley Cup contender while qualifying for the playoffs each of the past nine years — the longest active streak in the NHL. But Toronto has consistently fallen short in the big game come spring — most recently losing a Game 7 to the eventual-champion Florida Panthers 6-1 in Round 2 last spring, which prompted ownership not to renew Shanahan’s contract.

His 11-year run atop the organization was chronicled in an episode titled “Best Laid Shanaplans” and featured an interview in Shanahan’s kitchen shortly after the team announced his exit.

“When your season ends and you’re not the winner, you’re devastated,” Shanahan said. “I came here 11 years ago and I had really two goals: I wanted to rebuild the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, on and off the ice, and I wanted to win a Stanley Cup.

“I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to finish the job, but I think we’ve rebuilt the Toronto Maple Leafs.”

Shanahan’s tenure in Toronto will be remembered for his loyalty to the team’s star-laden core after it drafted William Nylander (2014), Mitch Marner (2015) and Auston Matthews (2016) with lottery picks in the first round of successive drafts. The group that became known as the “Core Four” also included John Tavares, who was a high-profile free-agent signing in 2018.

With a stagnant salary cap fueled in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic, those four forwards accounted for half of the money the Leafs had available to spend each season while losing do-or-die playoff games in six of the past seven years.

Marner left for the Vegas Golden Knights about a month after Shanahan’s departure — by far the biggest roster shakeup in Toronto over the past decade. The former president explained the rationale behind his patient approach in the Prime Video docuseries, saying: “I’ve just seen too many players that got quit on too early and they go and they win their Stanley Cups for other organizations.”

That was the founding principle behind what fans and media in Toronto dubbed the “Shanaplan,” a term born out of a spirited press conference where Shanahan diagnosed the Leafs’ biggest issue as constantly veering from one plan to another in the years before his arrival.

He vowed to end that cycle.

While Shanahan may not have warmed to the term — “I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in a sentence,” he said — he remained a man of his word throughout his Leafs tenure, perhaps to his ultimate detriment.

“The plan is just a simple one,” he said. “The plan is just to try to build a team capable of winning a Stanley Cup, and then winning a Stanley Cup.”

What shines through most in the episode is how much the job meant to him.

Shanahan recalled growing up as the youngest of four boys who pulled together around the TV whenever the Leafs were playing and said that he felt like “dying” as a kid every time the team’s season would end.

He also spoke warmly about the impact of his father, Donal, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in 1990, just as his playing career was getting going. Shanahan said he wished his dad had been around to see him become Leafs president because that would have been even more interesting to him than watching what he accomplished on the ice.

The Leafs presidency was a job that brought pressure every single day, Shanahan said, but also one that came with no shortage of pinch-me moments.

“I was very serious about my job,” he said. “I just wanted to do the work, and I wanted to make the team better, and I wanted to deliver, but I would still remind myself from time to time that, ‘This is special,’ and, ‘Enjoy it.’ It was the honor of a lifetime.

“I leave here now with nothing but gratitude.”

(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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