Dubas is completely over his head there it seems. They are making win now moves like trading their first for Karlsson but then is selling pieces for futures and saying in his presser they are trying to do a on the fly rebuild?
Why make some of the moves he has then? All he is doing is keeping them bad for longer.
He’s not over his head. This was a team that should have started a rebuild after the former GM, or at least was on the doorstep of a rebuild. Dude wasn’t going to completely fix their depth in one summer. They opted to stay loyal to the core/probably the owners wanting to make money on ticket revenue. Saying “we’re done” out loud would kinda hurt that.
It’s like the Canadian teams spending decades making moves to stay in the middle and sell other fans “this year could be different, look at these new toys”. A lot of that tends to be owner driven.
Then Malkin declined hard from ppg to 60’s immediately.
IMO the Karlsson trade was solid, but wasted on a coach who’s not ideal for Karlsson
Long term, Dubas was absolutely brought to be a long term rebuild organizer after Crosby decides he’s done. The previous old boys GM sped up the decline with multiple awful moves, and the team is eternally loyal to their coach for some reason which hampers
Dubas did a lot of good modernizing the leafs front office in terms of giving newer people positions and breaking down a few roles in to different positions that report to him. He identified some people lower in the organization that Lou and Babcock didn’t agree on, who ended up becoming impactful
Dubas usual haters choosing to judge him against what the Pens were 5+ years ago, rather than what they realistically were going to be regardless lol. Trading immediate year draft picks and prospects is meaningless, the rebuild will be long and those players/picks won’t be around the next core. He had a job to push forward and he acquired a 100 pt defenseman lol