from Eric Francis of Sportsnet,

In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday from the scouting combine in Buffalo, Treliving also addressed Johnny Gaudreau’s playoff struggles, the importance internal growth will play in his team’s evolution, trade speculation, the free buffet at the draft and his focus on signing Matthew Tkachuk, David Rittich and other free agents:

Sportsnet: You’ve had plenty of time to digest and delve into your team’s playoff failure. Have you uncovered why the team underachieved when it mattered most?

Treliving: Everybody wants to put it in a nice little box and have all the answers, but it’s not that easy.

When we watch the games again and break things down, at second blush some guys did better than I thought and some guys didn’t do as well. Obviously collectively we didn’t do enough.

As a hockey department, with our coaches and scouts, we have formalized a plan we want to move forward with here.

We’ll see how the weeks and month unfold. The general statement is we’ve got to get better. Not all of that is just airlifting in people. We think there are some areas we can improve on internally and we’re going to be better off for the experiences we went through.

We’re in a competitive market and a competitive business so we don’t want to announce we’re going to do this, that and the other, but there are certainly areas we’ve identified to improve.

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