Calgary Flames 'mutually part ways' with Brad Treliving following playoff elimination

Brad Treliving will not return as the Calgary Flames' general manager next season.

The Flames announced the move on Monday, saying the club agreed to "mutually part ways" with Treliving, whose contract expires on June 30.

"It’s a difficult day when you must part ways with a quality colleague and friend," said Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSEC) president and CEO John Bean in a news release.

"We are grateful of Brad’s contributions over the past nine years and wish him every success in his future, both personally and professionally."

The news comes after the Flames' playoff hopes were dashed in a devastating overtime loss to the Nashville Predators last week.

Don Maloney, who has been promoted to president of hockey operations, will also serve as the interim general manager.

"For our fans and our business, we need to move forward, and we are confident with Don’s experience that we will find the right general manger to build on Brad’s work and lead our team to the Stanley Cup," Bean said.

Maloney just completed his fifth season as senior vice-president of hockey operations with the Flames, after originally joining the club in 2016 as a pro scout.

The Flames say the process to find the team's new general manager will begin "immediately."

"Today is not a good day for me, it's not," said Maloney.

"Stanley Cup playoffs start tonight and we're not playing, number one, and number two is, Brad Treliving is a good friend," said an emotional Maloney.

"He left us for his reasons, but we move on."

Maloney then took a moment to thank Bean and the rest of the organization for allowing him to remain.

"If I was in their place I might have taken me to the city line and told me to face east and start walking and never return – based on the job we did this year.

The Flames say the process to find the team's new general manager will begin "immediately."

"My first task from (Bean) and the ownership is to do a deep analysis of this season. We had a team, have a team, that I believe should have been in the playoffs.

"We didn't. We failed to achieve, and that starts at the management level, which I was a part of, the coaching, the players, the training, the entire organization, we have to do a deep look at how we operate, how we make decisions – and fix it.

"We have a good team here, we have good players here. No question we'll be back next season better and hungrier, but we can't just keep talking about it, we have to do it.

"We're going to work very, very hard to bring a championship team to Calgary."

Maloney says he doesn't have a timeline for when a new GM will be hired, though he did say that the team's assistant general managers – Craig Conroy, Brad Pascall and Chris Snow – are "strong candidates" for the position.

"But we also realize we would be short-sighted to not go out there and find the best candidate – and maybe one of them is."

Maloney acknowledged that Snow's ongoing battle with ALS would impact his interest in the role, but noted he remains an important part of the management group.  

Calgary is the second team to change GMs this offseason, following the Pittsburgh Penguins, who fired Ron Hextall along with assistant Chris Pryor and president of hockey operations Brian Burke as part of a house-cleaning after missing the playoffs.

The Flames went 324-238-58 under Treliving and twice topped the Pacific Division with 50-win seasons (2019, 2022).

Treliving inherited Bob Hartley as a head coach and hired four: Glen Gulutzan, Bill Peters, Geoff Ward and Darryl Sutter.

Sutter previously coached the Flames from 2002 to 2006 and was GM from 2003 to 2010. The Flames hired him again in March 2021 when Ward was fired.

Treliving wasn't afraid of chasing big fish with large cheques, or making blockbuster trades.

His most recent headliner was dealing Matthew Tkachuk to Florida for Jonathan Huberdeau and signing free agent Nazem Kadri last summer.

The Flames invested a combined $133 million and 15 contract years in Huberdeau and Kadri.

Treliving also got goaltender Jacob Markstrom under contract in 2020 for six years and $36 million.

Among his other notable moves was signing forward Johnny Gaudreau out of college in 2014, and trading Calgary's first-round pick in the 2022 NHL entry draft to Montreal to get Tyler Toffoli.

- With files from The Canadian Press