The only wild take is evaluating GMs strictly by the contextless outcomes of playoff series. His job was assembling the team, and he consistently built one of the best teams in the league through difficult situations. You can choose to view things through only one black and white dimension, but the rest of the hockey world doesn't. That's why Shanahan wanted to re-sign him. That's why he was immediately promoted. That's why he was given a raise. That's why he was added to Hockey Canada.
I'm far from a Treliving guy, but the dude is scraping pennies to sign Max Pacioretty. I don't think the cap space situation is much different.
I think trades were actually his weakest attribute. Very few of them actually helped us. And most were downright awful.
Treliving has a rapidly rising cap and has had a decent amount of cap space each offseason. That's a much different situation.
Here they are. History of hockey trades by general manager Kyle Dubas - NHL Trade Tracker
I think most people want to see him get in games; even if just to not tank his value. It's weird that a GM and their new coach would have such a disconnect on a player.
There was space for Kyle as well. He didn't always use it the best. See Ritchie and Mrazek.
Again, I'm not one of his biggest fans, and he still has to prove some things to me, namely making decent trades (or trades at all).
Hockey is notoriously a massive old boys club. The fact he got a job after doesn't inherently mean he did a good job here lol Brian Burke got a bunch of jobs as Presidents of teams all over the NHL and he was a dog shit GM here. You are starting from an opinion that he was a great GM and then working to find the evidence to back that up. Trying to pass off the playoff results as contextless and acting like all the challenges he faced just fell out of the f***in sky is so ridiculously stupid. Like he built the team that failed to get it done. Just cold hard facts, and if he was short on money to build a better team....well he signed the deals.
lol, I'm sorry, but "contextless playoff outcomes" is world class copium.
Dubas blew all his space over paying the stars. All RFA's, all no leverage, gave huge signing bonuses, max money, blew the entire internal cap structure. Voluntarily too. It's just boring revisionism.
I don't necessarily mind giving Timmins a run. I wish we had used him more last year.
Not nearly as much. A rapidly rising cap makes a world of difference.
I don't mind him using cap space on Matthews and Nylander; though he paid Nylander too much, and kind of bungled the process.
Hockey may be an old boys club, but he wasn't an old boy, so it's even more impressive if anything. Getting a job after doesn't inherently mean he did a good job, but getting offered an extension by the Leafs, and then being immediately hired, promoted, and given a raise by another team and being brought in to international hockey doesn't scream the hockey world thinking he's horrible, or that they only consider contextless playoff outcomes when evaluating GMs.
You seemed to be dismissing the moves over the first year, and evaluating only off of this offseason. No, I don't think this team is in a stronger position. I wish it was.
Every other team had to deal with a stagnate cap, and having their plan predicated on that is also an issue.
Like?
He absolutely is part of the old boys club. I just don't understand how you can just completely clear off 6 years of playoff failures from Dubas's record with a bunch of manufactured BS like he was the only GM in hockey that had to deal with Covid....and then say Treliving sucks after one year lol. You have a pre formed bias here and consistently contradict yourself in the argument by saying stuff doesn't matter with Dubas and then turning around and critisizing Tree for pretty much the exact same thing.
Tre also got dropped into a situation where Shanahan promised his stars they wouldn't be traded.
Seriously, dekes, since your entire purpose of coming on the Leafs board seems to be to unsuccessfully try to defend Dubas and anything he did, I really don't see why you bother.
That doesn't change the difficulty of maneuvering through it. And it impacted teams differently.
Tanev, Domi, OEL, Liljegren, Kampf, Reaves, McMann, Dewar, Pacioeretty, Hakanpaa, Benoit, Stolarz.
I'm not going to debate every single transaction in a PGT, but I don't find anything particularly praiseworthy about any of this other than the basic fact that Matthews was extended and the basic fact that Nylander was extended (aside from how it was handled). The likes of Klingberg, Reaves, Bertuzzi, etc. were especially horrible, as is not yet re-signing Marner. In 2022-2023, we were one of the best teams in the league. Strong offensively and defensively, and coming off a good goaltending season. Had no long-term cap concerns, a cap about to skyrocket, and prospects ready to graduate. I don't really see how we're in a stronger position now.
Gee, people can't make up their mind. Some pretend that he's some kid trying to invade and change hockey, and others claim that he's part of the old boys club. You can't even remember how many years he was here. I just don't understand how you can completely ignore 5 years of decisions and results to look exclusively at only playoff outcomes that represented a difference of about one goal. I have no pre-formed bias, or contradictions. What exactly do you think has been contradictory? Contradictory would be defending Treliving despite him failing even more at the one solitary thing you decide to look at and criticized others for.
Not a single part of what I am doing here is defending Treliving lol what his legacy here is to be determined in the coming years. Also the Covid years effected us more because Dubas f***ed up the negotiations of the core players coming off ELC....something even he has admitted he bungled. You can't just say he had a flat cap so oh well nothing he could have done differently. He made plenty of his own mistakes that contributed to us failing in the playoffs. To say the GM bears no responsibility for a teams results come playoff time is so utterly ridiculous. If those teams Dubas blessed us with had of won back then would he have gotten credit for it? Or does he just not get blame when it goes badly? Your tangent about the old boys club thing can miss me has nothing to do with me or anything I have said/thought.
