Confirmed with Link: Kyle Dubas Not Returning

[TheBeastCoast]

If we replace Dubas with Treiliving we have objectively downgraded at GM. I hope to god that isn't the plan lol

 

[Jmo89]

The media is dumb.

The media have egos as fragile as NHL refs. They like Dubas because he wasn't a big meanie to them. They don't like the uncertainty going forward.

(For the record, out of the things I dislike about Dubas, I actually don't think it was an issue that he built good rapport with the media.)

 

[myleafs]

In our heart of hearts I think we kind of want that anyway.

I didnt want to say it with my outside voice but honesty I would be fine with it. Nobody is untouchable.

 

[MCR74]

Jesus Christ Chris at least pretend to be balanced

"No external candidate who is sharper"

That"s the impression l got.

 

[myleafs]

What severance. His contract is up June 30th. Turns down $4m x 5. What a maroon.

I think he was talking about Keefe not quitting because he wouldnt get paid for his final year

 

[Superstar]

This is the equivalent of Dubas acting like a rat on the ice and Shanahan punching him out...who was the player that high-sticked Shanahan in face who Shanahan ended up pummeling?

 

[GoonieFace]

If we replace Dubas with Treiliving we have objectively downgraded at GM. I hope to god that isn't the plan lol

Not a fan of Treiliving, but he’s not a downgrade from Dubas

 

[Gallagbi]

The media have egos as fragile as NHL refs. They like Dubas because he wasn't a big meanie to them. They don't like the uncertainty going forward.

(For the record, out of the things I dislike about Dubas, I actually don't think it was an issue that he built good rapport with the media.)

The media just got weeks if not months worth of content from this. Uncertainty is literally the best case for them

 

[geo25]

Brendan Shanahan’s curiously detailed firing of Kyle Dubas marks an ugly end of an era for the Maple Leafs

Leafs president’s chronological retelling of how he changed his mind on keeping Kyle Dubas made the organization look disconnected and amateurish

www.theglobeandmail.com

I’m sure that high-profile staff negotiations are sometimes this disconnected and amateurish. I’m also sure you don’t usually hear about it in real time.

For a sports organization that is always going on about how collaborative and inclusive it is, this sounds like the least collaborative and inclusive dialogue in business history.

Why was an agent required as a cutout? Dubas does deals for a living. He can’t settle the basics of his own with the guy who is his rabbi in the NHL?

This is a team that keeps a vice lock on all communications. Did no one in the organization have any idea what Dubas intended to say to the media in his exit interview? Did no one bother to ask?

And why would Dubas sabotage the back-and-forth with an 11th-hour demand for more money after his own agent had already settled that issue?

What this sounds like is an organization in which people are constantly speaking, but never really talking to each other.

It also feels as though there is another side of this we have yet to hear. In Shanahan’s telling, Dubas comes off like a flake. Dubas has no choice but to fight back on that narrative. This thing could get ugly long before the memoir stage.

The immediate effect of this decision is to end an era.

If the Core Four define the Leafs as a team, Dubas was their Brian Epstein. He didn’t discover them, but he made them the centrepiece of the team.

Though that hasn’t worked, Dubas seemed inclined to stick with them. Will the next GM confine himself to adding small strokes to a painting made by someone else?

If not, things will have to start happening quickly.

The draft is in five weeks. Auston Matthews’s no-trade clause locks in the week after that. William Nylander needs a new deal. Someone is going to have to figure out how to get rid of Matt Murray. If you’re trading Mitch Marner, he’s not getting any more valuable than he is right now. And what about Sheldon Keefe?

Shanahan said the head coach’s future will be left to the next GM. That makes Keefe the walking dead. How many conversations do you want him involved in from now until whenever someone drives to his office on a Friday morning to have a little chat?

All of a sudden, just when a whole bunch of hockey decisions need to be made, no one’s in charge. If there is a plan, it’s not apparent.

There is much more to this drama I'm sure. Now, whether it ever gets out is another story as they are both employed...this is far worse than the Muskoka 5....ultimately ownership is to blame....what a poorly run org.

 

[Petrus]

Not a fan of Treiliving, but he’s not a downgrade from Dubas

Treiliving is bad. It took Dubas 5 years to be a decent GM. But this year, Dubas has grown up and become a better GM.

Unfortunately Dubas use the Leafs as a training ground during the first 4 years on the job.

 

[yubbers]

That’s my concern too. We need a competent GM fast. This came at the very worst time. As if Dubas made sure the NMCs and Nylander M-NTC all line up with his own contract expiry; all designed to leverage them to Dubas’s own personal advantage.

Bingo.

It's pretty poetic he negotiated himself out of an offer though. LOL

 

[capfit9]

I’m sure Kyle’s learned a lot and this moment in his life will be good for his growth when he looks back.

 

[Dragao6]

How the Kyle Dubas talks fell apart, and why both sides will regret it - Northstar Bets

Truth be told, it’s an outcome both sides will almost certainly come to regret with the passing of time.

For the Leafs, there’s no possible way to stem the flow of Dubas loyalists now fleeing for the exits – an exodus that began with special assistant to the GM Jason Spezza tendering his resignation on Friday afternoon and will almost certainly continue with other staff and players.

As for Dubas, how and where will you ever recreate something like this?

The 37-year-old was instrumental in building almost every facet of what the Leafs are today from the ground up. His fingerprints were all over the roster, the farm system and the entire off-ice operation of an organization trying to bury the failures of multiple generations that came before.

They had a chance to get it done. No more.

Dubas clearly stretched his leverage to the limit during a brief round of negotiations, with his agent Chris Armstrong returning with a counter-proposal as recently as Thursday afternoon according to Shanahan, but who can blame him?

There is no external candidate who is unquestionably sharper or more qualified.

Let it be said here that Brad Treliving is now the favourite to replace him as Leafs GM because there are so few obvious options who meet Shanahan’s requirement that “having an experienced general manager would be an attractive quality.”

The others that fall into that category are Marc Bergevin, Peter Chiarelli, Chuck Fletcher, Ray Shero, Ron Hextall, Jim Benning and Dave Nonis.

The Leafs had a pretty damn good thing in Dubas, and he held one of hockey’s most attractive jobs thanks to them.

There was a good reason why Shanahan called him up to his Scotiabank Arena office last Sunday to formally present a contract offer. It wasn’t even 48 hours after the Florida Panthers shockingly eliminated the Leafs from a second-round series in five games, but the president didn’t want any potential doubts to take hold.

Dubas was working through his own process.

Ultimately, he got done in by the decision to speak publicly during the team’s end-of-season availability on Monday – “I had expressed to him that it was not my intention to talk to the media until I had something settled with him,” said Shanahan. “I expressed that I thought it was a good idea that maybe he didn’t either” – because it was there where Dubas first said he wasn’t sure about returning after learning how taxing things had been on his family.

That set off alarm bells for Shanahan.

“There was a shift in my thinking at that moment,” said Shanahan. “A dramatic shift in my thinking.”

Still, they texted throughout Tuesday and met face-to-face for multiple hours on Wednesday. There was a chance to save the relationship. They could have used a marriage counsellor.

Distrust had crept into the equation, which explains why they couldn’t piece it all back together even when Dubas formally told his boss that it was his intention to stay roughly 17 hours before he was sent packing.

It dubas built a losing team
Year after year constant disappointment losing in the first round until thisbyear where we were very much outplayed and lucky to have won that before almost getting swept

His fingerprint all over this team yes
But main guys?
Burke drafted rielly and nylander?
Hunter went for his London buddy marner
And matthews was an obvious pick

So really his major move was signing Tavares

 

[keonsbitterness]

Brendan Shanahan’s curiously detailed firing of Kyle Dubas marks an ugly end of an era for the Maple Leafs

Leafs president’s chronological retelling of how he changed his mind on keeping Kyle Dubas made the organization look disconnected and amateurish

www.theglobeandmail.com

I’m sure that high-profile staff negotiations are sometimes this disconnected and amateurish. I’m also sure you don’t usually hear about it in real time.

For a sports organization that is always going on about how collaborative and inclusive it is, this sounds like the least collaborative and inclusive dialogue in business history.

Why was an agent required as a cutout? Dubas does deals for a living. He can’t settle the basics of his own with the guy who is his rabbi in the NHL?

This is a team that keeps a vice lock on all communications. Did no one in the organization have any idea what Dubas intended to say to the media in his exit interview? Did no one bother to ask?

And why would Dubas sabotage the back-and-forth with an 11th-hour demand for more money after his own agent had already settled that issue?

What this sounds like is an organization in which people are constantly speaking, but never really talking to each other.

It also feels as though there is another side of this we have yet to hear. In Shanahan’s telling, Dubas comes off like a flake. Dubas has no choice but to fight back on that narrative. This thing could get ugly long before the memoir stage.

The immediate effect of this decision is to end an era.

If the Core Four define the Leafs as a team, Dubas was their Brian Epstein. He didn’t discover them, but he made them the centrepiece of the team.

Though that hasn’t worked, Dubas seemed inclined to stick with them. Will the next GM confine himself to adding small strokes to a painting made by someone else?

If not, things will have to start happening quickly.

The draft is in five weeks. Auston Matthews’s no-trade clause locks in the week after that. William Nylander needs a new deal. Someone is going to have to figure out how to get rid of Matt Murray. If you’re trading Mitch Marner, he’s not getting any more valuable than he is right now. And what about Sheldon Keefe?

Shanahan said the head coach’s future will be left to the next GM. That makes Keefe the walking dead. How many conversations do you want him involved in from now until whenever someone drives to his office on a Friday morning to have a little chat?

All of a sudden, just when a whole bunch of hockey decisions need to be made, no one’s in charge. If there is a plan, it’s not apparent.

You must have like a thousand media sites bookmarked.

 

[TheBeastCoast]

Not a fan of Treiliving, but he’s not a downgrade from Dubas

He kind of is though.

 

[Jmo89]

The media just got weeks if not months worth of content from this. Uncertainty is literally the best case for them

True, they do love the juicy stories! I moreso meant the uncertainty of being coddled.

 

[Nineteen67]

Somehow I knew Jonas wouldn't understand what Shanny was saying.

 

[Mess]

Just when you thought you had been forced to come to the grips with the realization that Shanahan was about to extend Dubas, leave it to Kyle to call a PC and complain publicly about too much stress following that up with a new offensive counter contract offer that pulled the rug out from under himself, and blew up his own Leafs career in the 11th hour.

Phew, that was a close call, just when you thought all hope was lost.

All Dubas had to do was show some self control, not air his dirty laundry in public causing internal doubt about the job being too stressful for himself and if he truly wanted it, and then trying to leverage Shanny for a much bigger contract than MLSE was prepared to offer at the last minute or he would still be Leafs GM. Instead Dubas sunk his own battleship with a self inflicted wound.

I guess the saying is true ,, "Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself". People who are given complete freedom of action will ultimately bring about their own downfall.

 

[andora]

Treiliving is bad. It took Dubas 5 years to be a decent GM. But this year, Dubas has grown up and become a better GM.

Unfortunately Dubas use the Leafs as a training ground during the first 4 years on the job.

Why is treiliving bad

 

[GoonieFace]

Regardless of what you think of how Dubas or Shanny handled this, this is not a good day for us. If we hire a competent GM, then it's fine. Losing Spezza hurts too.
I'm honestly concerned where we are going with this team.

A competent GM would be great, haven’t had one of those in some time

 

[Martin Skoula]

This is the equivalent of Dubas acting like a rat on the ice and Shanahan punching him out...who was the player that high-sticked Shanahan in face who Shanahan ended up pummeling?

Except the rat already took out your 3 best players and there’s 10 seconds left in the game.

 

[Eye Test]

Dubas is a fraud. Terrible negotiator and entitled brat. Leafs GM legacy just obliterated.

Shanahan should be fired too obviously but some of the takes on here are funny.

Wickenhiser as GM lol?
Core players all demand trades?

Can we please finally end the soft perimeter hockey? This was the first playoffs we sort of stepped up a little but it was our free agent adds doing it. Let’s build a real hockey team with compete and play normal hockey.

 

[Kurtz]

Treiliving is definitely a downgrade from Dubas. It's not just the Tkachuk deal. He let Johnny Hockey walk for nothing. He gave away Bennett for nothing. Used a 1st to dump Monahan. Gave up a bunch of picks to rent Jarknkrok. Etc.

He's bad.

I don't think he drafts well either. The only positive is that he recognizes the value of toughness.

 

[Jmo89]

@rocketman588 another tongue puncher?

 

[Apex Predator]

Somehow I knew Jonas wouldn't understand what Shanny was saying.

Of course not he got his sources from Dubas. Now he’s in the dark.