- The Maple Leafs named Andy O’Brien vice president of sport performance and added four more staff under him
- O’Brien has trained Sidney Crosby since Crosby was 13 and has worked for four Stanley Cup winners in Pittsburgh and Florida
- Read below for the Hayley Wickenheiser wrinkle and John Chayka’s take on the hire
The Maple Leafs just hired the guy who has been building Sidney Crosby’s body since Crosby was a teenager.
Toronto made it official Monday, naming Andy O’Brien vice president of sport performance and bringing in four more people to work under him.
His job covers strength and conditioning, sport science, nutrition, injury rehab and mental performance. Dr. Craig Slaunwhite, Jason Martin, Josh Crouse and Dr. Jordan Shallow all join the department with him.
Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun had the hire two days before the club confirmed it.
O’Brien started working with Crosby when the Penguins captain was 13. Nathan MacKinnon and Leafs forward John Tavares have trained with him too.
He ran Florida’s strength and conditioning program for four years starting in 2005, spent 2015 to 2021 as Pittsburgh’s director of sports science and performance, then returned to the Panthers as a high-performance consultant.
Four of those teams won the Stanley Cup. Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017, Florida in 2024 and 2025.
Take a look at the two photos we posted, one of O’Brien running a session at his own performance gym and one of Crosby’s quads swallowing a Penguins stall:
Crosby was asked about that partnership for a CBC feature on the two of them, and he did not treat it like a business arrangement.
“When I first met Andy, it was all just about trying to move. You want to get strong and build that way, but at the same time, you’re just trying to be an athlete. He was really helpful in that. He’s a trainer, but he’s also a friend.”
The GM did not undersell it either, calling O’Brien’s “record as an innovator and winner” a match for “what we are building here in Toronto.”
Former Leafs defenseman Carlo Colaiacovo, now a TSN analyst, needed four words:
There is one odd wrinkle. O’Brien used to train Hayley Wickenheiser, who was pushed out in Chayka’s front office purge earlier this summer.
Chayka has torn down and rebuilt nearly every support department in Toronto since taking the GM chair. Jim Hiller runs the bench now, Daniel Alfredsson and Mats Sundin are back in the building, and the scouting and research groups have new names all over them.
Auston Matthews lost a chunk of last season to a knee injury and the Leafs missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Keeping Matthews on the ice for 84 games is O’Brien’s department now.
