You missed the biggest one,. IMO
Dubas signed too few players, to too much money $$, and as a result Leaf Nation fans now sees too few playoff games. Its really that simple !!!
Its the situation the Leafs team find themselves annually as a result of greenhorn GM overpaying his star players to build a core, that results in only regular season success, but prevents a Cup competitive team, because you can't build successful depth around the core 4 forwards that consume 1/2 your salary cap.
Its the one constant the core 4, that remains the same each and every playoff loss, and its the one constant the GM refuses to address.
So when those core 4 do not show up in a game's boxscore, its expected your $1.65 mil 1A tandem goalie or your 3rd and 4th line players all making $1.5 mil or less playing for league minimum to bail the team out. So what is Dubas solution get a different goalie and move out some depth players and go bargain bin shopping for new ones and rinse and repeat, because you can't afford to keep your Hyman and Kadri type players for solid depth due strictly to Salary Cap mismanagement. So you tinker around the edges as busy work pretending it addresses the teams TRUE problem.
But why would Dubas change and address this, when its been shown year, after year, after year, that simply making the playoffs equals job security, for the President, the GM and the coach, and the playoff results don't matter?
Dubas has put himself in a tough and almost unmanageable, lose-lose situation.
Your top 4 players just can't make up almost half the cap it's just too hard to maneuver around that. But what are the solutions?
Trade Nylander: Trading a ppg winger making under 7M who is just as good as the 11M players in the playoffs just doesn't seem like a great idea. Especially for a team that needs to extract as much value as possible because you have 33M tied up to three guys. It's an option for sure and probably the most likely to happen, but at best it seems like it would be a lateral move, at worst you have another Kadri situation.
Trade Tavares: Yeah you can scratch that off the list. The team would never approach the Captain and discuss a potential trade with him. And even if they somehow had the balls to do it, 0% chance JT waives his NTC. JT will play out the remaining contract here at a minimum. You just have to hope that the Leafs being nice with JT now means when his contract is up he'll accept league minimum to be a third line faceoff specialist.
Trade Marner: Makes sense from a cap rebalancing perspective, but this franchise was starved for elite talent for so long. Honestly Mitch might be the best Leaf since Sundin (not including Matthews). That's a piece that is very very hard to trade away. He's great EV, on the PP, on the PK and has an unbelievable (regular season) connection with the most skilled Leaf to ever don the jersey. You only trade Mitch for ridiculous haul i.e. a bonafide top two defense man, top 6 forward, and quality third line Power Forward. Maybe add a pick in their too.
Trade Matthews: Lol. Leafs wouldn't even entertain it unless he vocally says he isn't resigning. Even then, the whole Leaf brass probably flies over to Arizona to do and say whatever is necessary to get him to stay.
Truely tough position to be in. And while it's easy to blame Dubas (I think he definitely deserves a good chunk of blame) he was a green GM and backed into a corner.
Hindsight is 20/20 but if you believed in what you had with Matthews, Marner, and Nylander you don't just go sign 11M dollar forwards. Saying that, time is of the essence when you have stars on ELC and the signing of JT was under the assumption of a rising Salary Cap. Dubbie got screwed in that regard.
Dubas held firm on the Nylander signing and took it to the 11th hour. While he didn't get the number he wanted he still ended up getting a great deal for Nylander. I think you can chalk that up as a success.
Marner contract. Regular season Marner I have no issues with his contract. Playoff Marner.... Would much rather see that number at 9 then just under 11. We saw some dirty tactics from the Marner camp and honestly Mitch's deal is one I wouldn't mind if it went to the 11th hour as well. It might be New GM suicide for Dubas to do that two years in a row with a couple of your best players though.
Matthews is a generational goal scoring number 1 centre. He was going to get whatever he reasonably wanted.
It would have been nice if M,M and N took the McDavid route and signed long term, team friendly deals to help really build a winner here, but you can't blame athletes trying to make as much money in their job as possible while they're still young. You also look at McDavid who's about to get swept in the Conference Finals and wonder if he's happy he took a discount to play in Edmonton.
Anyway, tough spot to be in Dubas. No 100% clear cut solutions. Will be interesting to see what happens.
