No, he's competing against Fletcher, Burke, Nonis, Lou, and Treliving, over a time period of 16 years. And that's just how far back the records go. Us being bad defensively likely goes back further than that. Looking at another site that goes another year back to 2007-2008 (under JFJ), we were 28th.
We were repeatedly among the worst in the league defensively for at least over a decade, across multiple GMs. Dubas remakes our defense within a couple years - adding multiple high-end defensemen, good defensive depth, and defensive proficiency in our forward group - while spending a higher percentage of draft picks on defensemen than exist on an active roster, turning us into a top-10 defensive team for multiple years, and you're out here trying to claim that he ignored defense.
If you want ignoring defense, maybe look to the guy that came in, immediately allocated less to defense, signed a bunch of the worst defensive players in the league, didn't replace our big defensive loss from the previous year, and tanked our defensive results, instead of blaming and falsely representing the only Leaf GM in the entire cap era that actually did something and got good defensive results.
Adding a 2nd Muzzin to the mix while we had Rielly, Muzzin, and Brodie already in the mix would not have been worth the cost. For the entire time we had those 3, we already had a contender defense. Players in their early 30s who are still contributing do not need to be aggressively moved off; especially when they don't hold crushing term. Muzzin suffered a fluke, career-ending injury, and Brodie was an excellent player for us through Dubas' tenure.
McDonagh had more term and a higher cap hit, which forced their hand a bit more, but what Tampa got from dumping him was a cap dump in return, and an immediately worse defensive team. I'm not sure why your go-to example is something that isn't all that similar, and that hurt the team that did it.
We paid a great price for 2 and a half years of a retained 2m McCabe, and he was somebody that helped both in the moment and into the future, so not really sure what you mean. We can sit here picking apart every cherry picked transaction in recent history to put it up against deadline deals, but also worth noting that Ekholm cost more in cap, Lindholm cost more in cap and assets, and we don't know where he (or Toews for that matter) was willing to extend. And captain hindsight doesn't really factor in the risk assessments for us at the time.
And quite frankly, as much as I wish we got Toews, we didn't really need a Toews when he was traded. We already had Rielly, Muzzin, and Brodie at that point, no open top-4 LD spots, and forward depth was a bigger concern, and even more-so after injuries, which is why we acquired forward depth at the deadline that year, that everybody here seemed to be happy about.
And for the record, it should be noted that above, you're claiming that the GM was stupid for not moving off effective players in their early 30s in Muzzin and Brodie, and then in the same breath, you're claiming that the GM was stupid for not trading for somebody in the exact same age range, that actually had fallen off, and came with more term. At least pick a lane.
Or, put another way, Dubas spent his first two draft picks on defensemen, and used half of his 1st round picks on defensemen, while using a higher percentage of overall draft picks and draft picks in the first 3 rounds on defenseman than their proportion of an active roster. That is not abandoning defensive drafting.
