Brendan Shanahan dodges question about how much autonomy Treliving will have in Toronto

The Leafs officially introduced Brad Treliving as the club's 18th General Manager in history today with their introductory press conference. President of Hockey Ops Brendan Shanahan accompanied Treliving at the podium and took his fair share of questions from the media as well. One of those questions was about how much autonomy Treliving would have in the decision-making process when it came to trades, signings and personnel.

As we all know, one of the things that led to the departure of Kyle Dubas was that he asked for a more streamlined process so that he could get things done quicker, knowing he had a number of important decisions ahead of him this off-season. Shanahan and the MLSE board was not thrilled with his proposal. When asked about the autonomy Treliving would have, Shanahan almost seemingly dodged the question and lied to everyone by saying, "I've always believed in process and I've always believed that a GM should have a good strong process and we've been lucky here in Toronto. The two people I've hired (Lou and Kyle) had good process. Ultimately a decision has to be made by the General Manager and that's how I've always operated. That's how I'll continue to operate. I think that Brad is a collaborative person... he's looking forward to meeting our staff and so many of the resources we've build here."

With Shanahan saying that the ultimate decision comes down to the GM, why then was there so much pushback from him and board regarding certain moves that Dubas wanted to make? Does Shanahan feel more comfortable giving Treliving more power because of his "experience"? It is quite possible, but to outright go against what has been revealed in the media is quite a ballsy thing to do considering what it led to just a few weeks ago.