He’s the guy at the top and hired Dubas who had no clue how to build a cup contender. Shanny doesn’t get off the hook here. The buck stopped with him.
Let's not forget he thought Lou was still a good GM in 2015 and hired him when the Devil pushed him upstairs. Some lowlights of the Lamoriello era:
Honorable mention
This is technically not on Lou as he wasn't yet the GM when the 2015 draft happened, Shanahan had fired Dave Nonis and the Leafs went into the draft with no GM.
-Traded away NSH's 1st rounded in the draft to Philly for Tampa's 1st rounder and Chicago's 2nd rounder. That 1st rounded was then flipped to Columbus for Columbus' 2nd and Philly's 3rd in the same draft.
Columbus picked Gabriel Carlsson 29th overall. Toronto took Travis Dermott and Jeremy Bracco with the 2nd rounders and Martins Dzierkals with the 3rd rounder.
With the the pick that Toronto traded to Philly, the Flyers picked...Travis Konecny
Lou's blunders
-Traded 5 players for Michael Grabner, one of which was Carter Verhaeghe
-Signed Matt Martin to a 4x2.5M deal (thank god he took it back when he went to NYI)
-Traded away a conditional 2nd to Tampa for 21 games of Brian Boyle.
-Gave Zaitsev a 7 year deal after only he had been with the Leafs for just 1 season. The Leafs had to give up Connor Brown (who was a good bottom 6 forward) to get rid of the contract 2 years later
-Signed Patrick Marleau to a 3 year, 18.75M deal. The Leafs ended up having to give the Hurricane a 1st rounder to take on the last year of the contract. That first rounder was used to select Seth Jarvis.
-Gave up a 2nd round pick for a washed-up Tomas Plekanec. Plekanec would go back to Montreal in the off-season, where he played 3 games before retiring.
-Failed to negotiate an extension for Nylander when he still had a year left on his ELC
And after 3 years of wet farts, Shanahan chose to change GMs right when Nylander's contract was coming to an end, and during the last year of Matthews and Marner's ELCs. This meant that a rookie GM was left to negotiate the 3 most important contracts for the franchise moving forward. We all know how that turned out.