Ninety-two days into the Brendan Shanahan Era and damned if the guy doesn’t look as if he’s aged a bit already — handsomely of course, in that slightly silvering Esquire Man way.

The job — Master of the Maple Leaf Domain — can wrinkle and wizen a fellow quickly, though Shanahan wryly demurs.

“I’ve still got the same amount of greys that I walked in with.”

On the final day of prospects camp — July scrimmages because hockey never sleeps in Toronto — the Leaf president has spent most of the morning looking down with keen interest at the scrubeenies on the ice at the MasterCard Centre. Once upon a time, he was an 18-year-old NHL rookie too, stepping into the Devils lineup, as raw as William Nylander, the Swedish-Canadian teenager Shanahan & Co. selected first in last month’s draft. Three decades and three Stanley Cups later, with a term as league disciplinarian-in-chief behind him, he’s the new kid on the block again, at 45, a franchise executive fledgling.

Everyone is watching. What can this in-comer do to succeed where so many other messiahs have failed with an ever-yearning, endlessly thwarted organization?

Thus far, Shanahan and GM Dave Nonis could be accused of not doing a great deal to significantly reload a team that teased and then spectacularly cratered out of post-season contention this past spring. Many observers were expecting a more rousing entrance onto the stage than what Shanahan helped craft when free-agency season launched, as the team primarily addressed the roster undercard and role-player holes.

For those familiar with Shanahan as a dynamic and ornery winger, a leader who could will things to happen in a game, fearless, it’s been somewhat disconcerting how cautiously — to an outsider — he’s proceeded, even how guarded he’s been in his comments to the media. This from someone who could so effortlessly fill a reporter’s notebook at his locker.

Where did that guy go?

“I’m the same person,” Shanahan insists. “Sometimes in my last job I used to say to people, don’t be fooled by the suit. I don’t have to bang a loud drum. I don’t feel I need to make headlines. When I take something on, I can’t turn it off. That hasn’t changed. The seriousness I have is the responsibility that I feel comes with this job. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t make big statements and wave my arms around.

“You learn how to become an executive. But the player is still under the suit.”

Alas, Shanahan can’t remove that suit and dress as a Leaf or their problems would be halfway towards solved.

But rest assured that he does have a plan, that he’s deep into the process of moving it along, incrementally, and that he understands your pain, Toronto. Because he’s always had a fierce attachment to the Leafs, despite a playing career that never brought him home.

“I feel incredibly lucky. I mean this when I say that I couldn’t be more excited to have this opportunity and privilege. I don’t ever want to play up the fact that I’m from here but I grew up a fan. In my 21-year career I had one eye on the Leafs, always had an interest in them, even when my interest was in beating them.

“This would mean so much to me, if we can put this together. It would certainly be something that I was most proud of.

“Going to the (league) and taking a step away from the game, not just going from playing for wins to coaching for wins, was a good lesson for me in the type of work that needs to be done in order to be successful, or to give yourself the best chance at being successful. I have a burning desire to make this work.”

Others with high hockey IQs have tried and failed, beating their heads against the Leaf anvil. Some made grandiose promises out of the chute. And more than a few have imparted their advice on how to fix the Leafs, which Shanahan has weighed. Yet his vision is more methodical than splashy, which explains why Toronto didn’t aggressively pursue the sparse bright shiny objects that were available in free agency and why no roster-ripping trades have ensued.

“One common theme that I’ve heard from a lot of people is to avoid the temptation to make knee-jerk decisions that provide the impression of a quick solution and satisfying people’s hunger for IT’S GOTTA HAPPEN NOW, IT’S GOTTA HAPPEN NOW, IT’S GOTTA HAPPEN NOW. And here we are 90 days later: I haven’t lost a game, I haven’t won a game. And everyone’s saying, come on , change everybody!

“I knew this was coming. And I know there will be stormy days ahead. If I want to have success, I have to stay determined through those stormy days and trust what I know.”

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Those are his gut instincts. What his gut is telling him — a view shared by Nonis and the scouting staff — is that the Leafs require a holistic approach rather than drastic intervention. It’s a methodology that will not satisfy a restive fan base. Really, is it too much to ask of this massively profitable franchise to just make the darn playoffs, or to not suffer a catastrophic meltdown in Game 7 of the opening round?

Not a chance Shanahan will “guarantee” a post-season berth for Toronto in 2015. He slides away from the question. “We will be successful here if we build a team and an organization that is healthy throughout, meaning we’re drafting well, we’re developing well. You have to be able to produce your own players at a certain point. And then making the Maple Leafs a team that can sustain that type of pressure to challenge for the Cup year after year.

“You know, people used to ask me about scoring. You can’t will yourself to score. But you can will yourself to do the things that usually get you goals. You can skate hard to certain spots, you can shoot the puck on goal, you can get it away quickly and that gives you the greatest percentage of getting a goal. I think, to a certain extent, it’s similar with winning. There is luck required to win a Stanley Cup. But you have to put yourself in one of that group of six or seven or eight teams that has a legitimate shot to do it. To me, the goal is to become a team that is not just hoping each year to make the playoffs.”

Shanahan is dodgy about specifics but that’s the subtext he and Nonis have been addressing with their acquisitions of late, from Roman Polak (underestimated as a strong skater, he says) for Carl Gunnarsson, to the signing of free agents Petri Kontiola and Mike Santorelli , to the return of hard-nosed Leo Komarov .

The objective: character and compete. The Leafs were sorely lacking in those regards last season and, ultimately, exposed for it.

“They are the kinds of players that in one way or another want to have a positive impact on a game in some fashion,” Shanahan says of the new recruits assembled.

If not sufficiently glossy to impress Leaf Nation, well, too bad.

“You’ll never get from me this sort of quick, manufactured façade of a fix that will serve a purpose for a pep rally but not necessarily be what we envision as good for the end product.”

Quick fixes, Shanahan continues, are often illusory. “Sometimes, just moving people out when there are dramatic failures is also the wrong message, especially when you’ve got guys that want to remain and be part of the solution. I’ve seen too many teams in my life that, before they became really good teams, had epic failures. The solution wasn’t always just to ship six guys out, bring six new guys in.”

And sometimes it takes just one.

For the Leafs, Brendan Shanahan has to be that guy. The clock started ticking 92 days ago.

Correction - July 14, 2014: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated William Nylander's given name.

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