Reb, I'd love to see the 15 GMs you'd rank above Dubas and play the same game of picking out their worst moves one-by-one. I'd wager to say they're much worse without the positive offset.
The Foligno trade was absolutely bad, but that's deady logic with Chiarot somehow nulling all the good moves Zito made, along with general philosophies. I didn't like the Sandin trade -- I wanted the Flyers to draft him way back when -- but they had Reilly and Brodie on the left side with term, and they made a decision to get a late 1st round pick over play him on the 3rd pair. I don't know if that's right, but they acquired McCabe too (a good player) to fill Sandin's minutes, not Gustafsson. It's not as simple as you're making it out with "downgrading". The reality is I'm sure Dubas had to answer to his bosses too, especially when the narrative around the Leafs was: "need grit."
They objectively did a great job cycling through depth on forward and defense. Again, my point was they understood the usefulness of depth turnover and were willing to fail to succeed on that front -- and they rarely were wedded to the failures. You just wanted to cite the worst examples and not the dozen positives because they churned through a lot of guys. Galchenyuk played 32 games -- Colorado also acquired him this year. Thornton was fine on the Leafs, so I don't even get that one. He fell off the cliff the next year with.....wait for it.....Florida and Zito. How about Spezza, Mikheyev, Kerfoot, Bunting, Samsonov, Giordano, Brodie, Engvall, Jarnkrok, O'Rielly, ZAR, Kampf, Timmins, Muzzin, NAK? These were all good players, useful pro level additions, and they did it with no cap breathing room. Those don't get voided because Wayne Simmonds was signed for $900k. It's simply not reality to say they didn't kill it on that front.
