Ranking Dubas' worst transactions - #1

[IPS]

Out of the ones that personally annoyed me the most - the Marner contract. The Rantanen contract following up very quickly was the ultimate salt in the wound.

But for the worst one with hindsight considered, it'd have to be the Tavares signing. Matthews and Marner were practically foaming at the mouth for every last penny the second that happened.

 

[CantLoseWithMatthews]

Foligno trade has to be up there. Just crazy how stupid that was, and even a slightly better move probably gets them past Montreal. Actually in general it's pretty crazy that he's traded away 6 first round picks and 5 second round picks and all we have to show for it is Jake McCabe and a broken down Muzzin. Everything else has been to either get out of a bad deal or a rental

 

[mydnyte]

its healthy to live in the past ...said nobody, ever.

 

[supermann_98]

Think it's gotta be the Tavares contract because theres just been a massive snowball effect since that signing.

Its caused all our cap troubles, it caused Matthews and Marner to get extremely overpaid, caused the trade of Kadri etc etc, the list goes on.

This, it snowballed to overpaying Matthews and Marner as you said, then because they got overpaid they had to trade Marleau to fit under the cap and gave up the 1st to do that, then because Kadri wasn't as effective as a 3rd liner they dumped him for pennies on the dollar.

The Mrazek and Murray trades sucked too but had nowhere near the same long lasting impact

 

[Face Of Bear]

McCabe/Lafferty trade has gotta be the biggest overpay and worst return. Kadri for Kerfoot/Barrie a close second.

 

[NinjaKick]

aside from the Tavares contract, I'm going with the Sandin trade. sure the draft pick is nice to have but how did a draft pick help us in the playoffs? we needed a top 6 lw and didnt get it. Kerfoot playing on the top lw in the playoffs... what the f... no wonder we lost.

the Sandin deal blew up in Dubas' face and his termination was warranted.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

I wish I could vote for most of them. Anyway the OP has created a good list here. The one that stands out and irks me the most is The Marleau trade. I hated that so much. Giving Marleau and a 1st to CAR to take on 1 freaking year of his contract. Unless the politics/optics of him playing a 4th line role or a regular healthy scratch was just too much, they could have just kept him around for one more season.

The fickle hockey fans are going to come at me and say that "Marleau was useless", etc. No way. He still played 2 more seasons and scored 22 points in 66 games with PIT/SJS in the 19/20 season. Toronto couldn't have used him at all for depth scoring?

CAR must be just laughing when they look back at what Dubas did.

 

[Leafs87]

Honestly the Tavares deal was bad but he was a UFA center. The best to be on the market in a very long time. In his prime. There were higher offers. It set the tone for the internal budget, but there was a business case.

The Marner RFA deal looking the way it did however is inexcusable. That one gets my vote.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

Foligno trade has to be up there. Just crazy how stupid that was, and even a slightly better move probably gets them past Montreal. Actually in general it's pretty crazy that he's traded away 6 first round picks and 5 second round picks and all we have to show for it is Jake McCabe and a broken down Muzzin. Everything else has been to either get out of a bad deal or a rental

Some good points here.

 

[notbias]

I wish I could vote for most of them. Anyway the OP has created a good list here. The one that stands out and irks me the most is The Marleau trade. I hated that so much. Giving Marleau and a 1st to CAR to take on 1 freaking year of his contract. Unless the politics/optics of him playing a 4th line role or a regular healthy scratch was just too much, they could have just kept him around for one more season.

The fickle hockey fans are going to come at me and say that "Marleau was useless", etc. No way. He still played 2 more seasons and scored 22 points in 66 games with PIT/SJS in the 19/20 season. Toronto couldn't have used him at all for depth scoring?

CAR must be just laughing when they look back at what Dubas did.

This is like thinking we shouldn't have signed Bertuzzi and just eat a year of Murray.

We haven't shown we are ready to contend, they should not trade any assets to unload Murray.

 

[Mr Bill Waters]

Honestly the Tavares deal was bad but he was a UFA center. The best to be on the market in a very long time. In his prime. There were higher offers. It set the tone for the internal budget, but there was a business case.

The Marner RFA deal looking the way it did however is inexcusable. That one gets my vote.

I have to add that MM has grown into his contract and then some - just like Drai.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

This is like thinking we shouldn't have signed Bertuzzi and just eat a year of Murray.

We haven't shown we are ready to contend, they should not trade any assets to unload Murray.

This is not like thinking anything like you're saying.

We are still in the present and Murray is still a leaf.

If you want to say that you speculate this might happen then fine. Don't forget that Dubas had to spend assets to get out of his own mistakes with certain players.

 

[Nineteen67]

It was signing Tavares and then setting the bar for the other contracts that killed those years.

 

[Mitch nylander]

Foligno trade is probably the worst and it's not an option.

 

[andora]

Foligno trade has to be up there. Just crazy how stupid that was, and even a slightly better move probably gets them past Montreal. Actually in general it's pretty crazy that he's traded away 6 first round picks and 5 second round picks and all we have to show for it is Jake McCabe and a broken down Muzzin. Everything else has been to either get out of a bad deal or a rental

2 point here - we let noesen go from that too.. nothing fancy but pretty damn decent bottom line contributor

The amount of draft picks moved bugs me but how little we traded for termed players always is more sour. Maybe the deals werent there.. but my big thing is continuity and i like targeting players that fit with term

This, it snowballed to overpaying Matthews and Marner as you said, then because they got overpaid they had to trade Marleau to fit under the cap and gave up the 1st to do that, then because Kadri wasn't as effective as a 3rd liner they dumped him for pennies on the dollar.

The Mrazek and Murray trades sucked too but had nowhere near the same long lasting impact

I blame choosing johnsson and kapanen over trading marleau.. personally i would ha e capitalized on those two in deals first

 

[Gary Nylund]

McCabe/Lafferty trade has gotta be the biggest overpay and worst return. Kadri for Kerfoot/Barrie a close second.

I love the the McCabe trade myself. He's a very good player and to get him that cheap for 3 playoff runs, that's a ton of value there.

Marner contract for me. There may be other candidates for biggest mistake, but that one gets extra consideration because it was so damn obvious it was a mistake as soon as it was announced. So not only the worst mistake IMHO, but also the most obvious one by miles and miles and miles.

 

[phillipmike]

Dubas accepting the Leafs GM job in exchange for money has to be the worst

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Marleau trade being on here is confusing to me, I don't blame him for the Marleau trade because it Lou that gave Marleau 3 years and by doing so put Kyle in that situation, there is A LOT you can blame him for that's not it.

It's the Kadri trade, even though that wasn't his first choice it was an AWFUL trade.

McCabe/Lafferty trade has gotta be the biggest overpay and worst return. Kadri for Kerfoot/Barrie a close second.

Jake McCabe for 2 more years at 2 million that's a GREAT trade

 

[francis246]

Kadri trade for me, tied into JT signing. We really didn’t need a 2nd hole center with Kadri, particularly as he was relatively cheap there, although at the time an upgrade and without the baggage. The LAST thing anyone was clamouring for was a one dimensional offensive, soft D man, literally jaw dropping return and exactly the wrong need. Kerfoot was a dime a dozen player really and Barrie was a joke here.

I will say though, his biggest blunder was how he handled the RFA contracts, it was all such a amateurish farce.

100% the RFA contracts. Signing Tavares wasn’t a mistake. Thinking you don’t have to bridge the RFA’s after signing Tavares was the BIGGEST mistake Dubas made. I have no issues with the Tavares contract it’s probably one of the better UFA value contracts for a big name player in recent memory.

But my God how do you mess up the RFA resignings, it’s unforgivable. Matthews, Marner, Nylander should have all been bridged.

Trading Kadri was mistake #2. We didn’t have to. Even after allDubas’ other mistakes, we had the cap room to Keep Kadri until his deal expired. We should have just kept it and ran Matthews, Tavares, Kadri down the middle as long as we could. When it came time to letting Hyman go, we then could have moved Tavares to Kadri’s wing for 1 season. But based on what we know now, I truly believe Shanahan forced that move.


I voted Marleau because I think we should have just bought him out. People thinking we would have taken Seth Jarvis are out to lunch. We had a pick two picks later and chose Amirov. Amirov would have been our pick had we kept our original pick. We still would have lost out on him because the tumour would still be there. So that draft is a wash.

 

[mydnyte]

Dubas's worst transaction was his own contract re-negotiation.

 

[phillipmike]

Dubas's worst transaction was his own contract re-negotiation.

I view that as the best because it got himself fired.

 

[francis246]

aside from the Tavares contract, I'm going with the Sandin trade. sure the draft pick is nice to have but how did a draft pick help us in the playoffs? we needed a top 6 lw and didnt get it. Kerfoot playing on the top lw in the playoffs... what the f... no wonder we lost.

the Sandin deal blew up in Dubas' face and his termination was warranted.

Lol, who cares Sandin can’t play defense and literally got blown up every series. Sandin was never going to be a top 4 dman for us. So get what you could for him. We also needed to replenish the cupboards.

2 point here - we let noesen go from that too.. nothing fancy but pretty damn decent bottom line contributor

The amount of draft picks moved bugs me but how little we traded for termed players always is more sour. Maybe the deals werent there.. but my big thing is continuity and i like targeting players that fit with term


I blame choosing johnsson and kapanen over trading marleau.. personally i would ha e capitalized on those two in deals first

Agreed!! He ended up getting a first for Kapanen the following season. I would have traded both of those guys first. Dubas overpaid both of them. We still had decent young guys at that point too. Trevor Moore was just coming up

 

[ACC1224]

Marleau trade being on here is confusing to me, I don't blame him for the Marleau trade because it Lou that gave Marleau 3 years and by doing so put Kyle in that situation, there is A LOT you can blame him for that's not it.

It's the Kadri trade, even though that wasn't his first choice it was an AWFUL trade.



Jake McCabe for 2 more years at 2 million that's a GREAT trade

Dubas is 100% at fault for Marleau. Dubas made the 3rd year an issue.

 

[Jimmy Firecracker]

Not on this list is the Foligno trade which I have a deep hatred for. Paid too much for the wrong player at the wrong time. An over the hill gritty vet with injury issues was the target rather than the more skilled Hall who went for a lot less in his trade. And everything that could go wrong with regards to this trade did. Foligno inevitably got hurt and one of our big stars which the offence ran through sustained a long term injury and the Leafs didn’t have the depth to make up for it. Then to tray rub salt in the wound Foligno left to sign with one of our rivals, though he still never made it out of round one so ha ha. Riley Nash was also injured and useless for us.

On this list I would vote for the Kadri trade. Not that I didn’t understand the logic of wanting to move him after back to back playoff suspensions, but Dubas’ rush to move him resulted in an awful trade. Barrie didn’t fit in at all and Kerfoot was much less effective than Kadri, a player who never found a permanent spot in the lineup but somehow always managed to have a big role on the team.

My third least favourite move would be the Marleau trade. Paid a high pick to get rid of one years worth of a bad deal that ended up being worse than it could’ve been because of course that year the Leafs had their worst regular season of the Matthews era.

 

[notbias]

This is not like thinking anything like you're saying.

We are still in the present and Murray is still a leaf.

If you want to say that you speculate this might happen then fine. Don't forget that Dubas had to spend assets to get out of his own mistakes with certain players.

If Murray is moved for assets, Dubas will rightfully be blamed, just as Lou should be for Marleau, that is all I am saying.

Dubas is 100% at fault for Marleau. Dubas made the 3rd year an issue.

Treliving will 100% be at fault for Murray? He didn't need to sign Bertuzzi, he made this an issue.