LeBrun: What’s the Maple Leafs’ level of urgency with William Nylander? Catching

CHICAGO — In the early days of his tenure as Maple Leafs general manager back in June, Brad Treliving joked that he was drinking out of a fire hose.

It was the perfect way to describe hitting the ground running amidst the mayhem of his hiring and Kyle Dubas’ dramatic exit.

After a hectic summer that involved adding important free agents, extending head coach Sheldon Keefe and, most importantly, putting pen to paper on a new deal with franchise player Auston Matthews, it would appear that for now at least, everyone at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment headquarters can take a deep breath.

And about that fire hose …

“It’s slowing down,” Treliving said with a smile as he sat down with The Athletic at the GM meetings in Chicago. “It was busy. I mean, any time you go into a new situation, it’s all that stuff — it’s the newness, and the timing. It was three weeks before the draft. You had free agency. And the situation we were in, we had a lot of free agents and a couple of big files to deal with.

“And then after hours, there’s the move itself and all the home stuff to deal with. So it was a busy summer. But the treadmill is slowing down to a jog pace.”

Some normalcy has returned to Leafs land after about as dramatic a few days in May as there could be, and that’s saying something for a franchise that once saw owner Harold Ballard ask Roger Neilson to wear a paper bag on his head before a game after firing and un-firing the head coach (mercifully Neilson didn’t wear it).

Point being: Treliving’s hire has so far brought exactly what the Leafs franchise needed in the wake of the breathtaking Dubas-Brendan Shanahan breakup: some calmness.

It is reminiscent somewhat of Cliff Fletcher’s arrival as Leafs GM, also from Calgary, in 1991. Given everything that went down after last season, Treliving’s steady hand is welcome.

As obvious as it might seem to most people, though, that Treliving would jump at the opportunity to take on arguably the NHL’s most coveted job, it still required a heart-to-heart with his wife, Julie, before saying yes. After all, Treliving had just walked away from a potential extension in Calgary following nine years at the helm there. Was he ready mentally to jump from one Canadian frying pan to an even larger one?

“Yeah, it was an interesting time,” Treliving said of his decision. “I really enjoyed my time in Calgary. Over that time, you become close to a lot of people there. The city was home. My girls (daughters Ryann and Reese) were raised there. That’s home for them.

“So when we left the Flames, it took a while to get through all that. And then when this thing came up, yeah, you talked about it, there’s lots of emotions. Like, Kyle is a good friend.”

Treliving has a lot of solid relationships in the NHL GM group, and Dubas — now president of hockey operations and GM of the Penguins — had certainly developed into someone he trusted and talked to a lot over the past…