He was handed the keys to the winningest regular season team in franchise history and in the 3 years since he's lost in the first round twice, and lost in the play-in once.
Interesting how only the regular season is mentioned pre-Dubas, but only the playoffs are mentioned post-Dubas. I wonder why that would be. Could it be because we've had multiple better regular seasons under Dubas, and playoff outcomes were exactly the same pre-Dubas?
What Dubas was actually handed was the keys to a team that had one good regular season propped up by a bunch of unsustainable factors (health, shootout record, elite starting goaltending, journeyman waiver-claimed backup fluking into a Vezina-quality season, some of the best ELC talent in the cap era, etc.). Depth was leaving to UFA, the pipeline was sucked dry and unreplenished, cap anchors remained, a toxic coach had countless high-paying years remaining, and that ELC talent had to be signed.
Since then, even through considerable injuries, a flat cap, and things like our starting goalie imploding, Dubas has posted multiple better regular seasons on the back of sustainable factors and strong underlying metrics, and while playoff outcomes have so-far remained unchanged, our team has played much better within those series, despite some pretty significant core injuries.
His contracts absolutely killed this team.
His contracts have done no such thing. The contracts he's handed out are reasonable and consistent with comparables, and this is a stronger team now than the one he took over.
The Foligno trade was him being super desperate, and not believing in his plan. You can't say you believe in skill and offence then trade a 1st for Foligno
It has nothing to do with not believing in his plan. Your perception of Dubas' "plan" is merely incorrect. He's always placed value on things other than just skill and offense. In fact, it was Dubas that completely re-made our defense to go from one of the worst in the league to one of the best.
