The Maple Leafs may have a surprising reason not to promote Jake Muzzin

He is already listed on the Maple Leafs player development staff.

That has not stopped a fan post from proposing him as the replacement for Hayley Wickenheiser, and the idea travelled fast.

Wickenheiser was assistant general manager of player development, not director. The director title belonged to Danielle Goyette, who was also let go on July 9.

John Chayka cut more than a dozen hockey operations staff that day, and the deepest damage landed in development and scouting. Goyette, Wickenheiser, development staffer Joe Underwood and skating consultant Michele Moore Davison all went.

Muzzin did not. Neither did Nik Antropov, Kyle Clifford, Denver Manderson or Patrick O'Sullivan, the former players who actually run the on-ice sessions.

That is the detail worth sitting with. Chayka did not empty the department, he stripped out the management layer sitting on top of it.

The one senior addition in this area is Judd Brackett, appointed June 1 as assistant general manager of player evaluation.

Brackett oversees amateur and pro scouting, and his mandate is judging players rather than teaching them.

Pair that with the vacancies and a structure appears in which development coaches report upward through evaluation instead of through their own executive branch.

Nobody has been named to run development since July 9, and Toronto has given no indication anyone will be.

So the push to promote Muzzin may be arguing for a chair that gets folded rather than filled. His pull with young defencemen is real, and prospect Ben Danford has said publicly that Muzzin is the player he wants to model himself after.

The better question is not whether Muzzin deserves a title.

It is whether Toronto still believes development needs one at all.

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