I think the funniest belief by blokes here is that a GM is just running around doing a bunch of shit without anyone looking over the moves. To make a deal, there's so many parties involved.
There's the finance side, the president's take, the hockey ops' take, etc. It runs down the chain. The initial idea may be the GM's, but many parties agree to these moves because for one - The GM sits down with the Coach and the Hockey Ops and Team President each season and hashes out a plan, when they're all on the same page, they make moves.
It's not as if these tossers are going full rogue and have this insane autonomy. They never have. Unless you're one of those rare few GM's that are basically all 3 hats for a team in upper management and you're basically just answering to the owner at that point, in which case those teams are usually more f***ed than others.
When things fail - the coach gets the axe or the gm. They're the fall guys because they fought for a vision and the other agreed to their vision and how it was presented, then it failed. But in the end, the others could have stated that it wouldn't be a good idea and didn't and get to keep their job. In Dubas' case, Shanahan is the bigger idiot and always has been.
Dubas being stupid now is purely based on his 100% allegiance to Mike Sullivan and his demented vision that hasn't paid off in 8yrs. In a sense, Dubas has become Shanahan.
