Habs added Chiarot, Edmundson, Savard, and Petry over the years. Leafs tried but they went after the wrong ones in many cases.
Muzzin and Brodie and then Giordano were the good adds but now Muzzin is toast and Giordano's gas is running out.
Dubas missed on the Kadri trade. That was a darn good value contract and he should have traded it for futures they could go after quality D that would be turning the needle on their roster today. They might have not been forced to add a 1st to unload Marleau as well.
Dubas's error is thinking they were ready to compete too early. His strategy was clearly top 6 and Rielly on D. Thought he could overcome depth issues and/or though his prospect pool was strong. Sens maybe making the same mistake but earlier. If Chychrun walks to UFA, imagine.
Babcock quote and it was a direct shot at Dubas: "We will find out very soon if our depth is as good as we say it is"
i don't agree with your assessment at all. The hindsight lens seems to critique one approach, while conveniently ignoring the outcomes of another...
Chiarot, Edmundson, Savard and Petry, "added over the years", resulted in.... drum roll... literally the d-corp in place for one of the worst single seasons in franchise history
as others have already tried to explain, when we look at the context of the Laffs early playoff exits during their recent management tenure, the external factors and plain bad luck can't be ignored, nor can their tremendous overall success at winning hockey games. I'd be curious to see how the Laffs last 4-5 years stack up to any 4-5 year window in their history... i'd bet it sits among their franchise best.
Winning in the playoffs is far more fickle than the hindsight lens you apply takes into consideration. Duba's "strategy" for building his roster can't be divorced from the significant negative impact of the covid dampening of the cap. whereas for some teams, like ours, it ended up being a massively positive stroke of luck (habs roster, with the dmen you pointed out, doesn't make the playoffs without the play-in or the weird division alignment, and that magic playoff run.... a HOF caliber playoff performance does wonders for a team to make the outcome better than the sum of the parts).
Should Dubas have traded away some of the elite assets they had in place to try to land a Price caliber golie or a norris caliber top pairing dman? Perhaps... but, how many of those moved rosters over the past few seasons?
bottom line is that they did actively try to address their deficiencies at D and in net, working within the cap constraints they had. The list of dmen they did bring in reflects that. One better bounce or one less Galch brain fart and the entire narrative could easily be different about how they weren't "built for the playoffs"... not unlike how a few lucky bounces and one HOF goalie run fed the "clydesdale" narrative that just as quickly proved nonsense 1 short summer later.
The leafs have been one of the most competitive teams in the league throughout Dubas's tenure... a perennial contender that has been snakebitten at the worst moments. Happens.
They've also been under .610 win % 1x (.579) during his tenure... For context, Habs have been over .610% zero times in that span, and we had Carey Price in net 3 of those 5 years. Not sure the habs roster building is what you want to hold up as an example of what the laffs could or should've have emulated
nor is quoting a cup winning coach whose behavior towards players and management has left him on the outside looking in for several years
