Dubas is completely shallow and rigid in his management.
Belief in the Big 4, Keefe and reinventing the skill possession game to look like Pep Guardiola soccer do the detriment of everything else. Where does this belief even come from? What is the process, analysis in the end? Why does he compare himself to Tampa, Washington, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit? Beyond the talking point everything is very superficial.
The only places he's left for himself to manage are on the very fringes of that project, goalies he doesn't understand or respect and scapegoat plug and play pieces he will swap in and out like Yahoo Fantasy where you can waste cap money on betting on this or that.
He should be fired, but the only thing keeping him there is this is an inconvenient time in the year.
I fundamentally do not believe that he is shallow or rigid in his management.
Look at our 4th line over the years. It's been small and speedy, it's been grizzled and experienced, it's been punchy, it's been grindy, it's been everything under the sun. Our blueline has evolved from a puck moving express to a well balanced unit, to a unit that can't even transition the puck out of their own end. This team has changed SO much over the years, the only thing that has stayed consistent is the core.
We don't play Pep Guardiola soccer whatseover. I've watched just about every Man City game they've played this year and the Leafs aren't even in the same realm. The Leafs have become a group of personalities who try and style the puck into the net, they are nothing like the possession monster Guardiola teams. A Guardiola team is a team of All-Stars who all buy into a program that is bigger than themselves and play an incredibly impressive team game where they work their butts off all 90 minutes. Our Leafs use possession to give the puck to Marner and have him try something magic.
What I will say for Dubas is that he is not actually rigid at all. One of the things I like about him is his adaptability and willingness to fix mistakes. He makes mistakes like Ritchie and Foligno, but moves on from them and gets them right the next time around, like Giordano. I wholeheartedly agree that he doesn't understand goalies, I said in the Murray thread that this was the move that would finally get him fired, and it is indeed the big4 that have meant he is painted into a corner and can only tinker at the edge of the project.
To my eyes, our process for the last four years has been that we have our big guns and then we tinker with the bottom six and build up the defense to try and get the recipe right and let our young stars mature. I do not think there was any will anywhere in the fandom or the organization to try and break up the big4 early. That will likely go down in history as a mistake, but it is a mistake that I can live with. I would hate a GM who wasn't willing to bet on Mitch Marner to pull his head out of his ass.
He might be fired, probably will be. When he is fired, I'll comment something along the lines of, "Too bad". If he's fired and the core doesn't change, I'll see you all in the thread about firing the next guy.
