When are we going to be honest with ourselves about how bad Kyle Dubas is?

[DingDongCharlie]

It’s clear he doesn’t know how to build a hockey team tbh. Adding Karlsson when they didn’t need him. He strikes me as a Dorion type who just adds big names cause they are available, not actually looking at how they would fit into the team

It's like the modern version of the Rangers before the '04 Lockout. "Hey, this guys available? Everyone knows him, let's get him." Zero thought put into proper roster construction.

 

[Gurglesons]

It's honestly impressive how badly he's done in PIT.

Gave away Guentzel for nothing when that should've been the first big trade to recoup assets.

Acquired EK65 and lost out on a future potential top pairing D in Dickinson that SJS got with that pick.

I didn't have high hopes, but he has basically fully realized a lot of what Toronto said about him. He has no clue on how to build a hockey roster, is consistently losing trades, his drafting and player evaluation is mediocre.

 

[SmoggyTwinkles]

If you go to the Leafs board, there is not one single discussion on Kyle Dubas.

We don't care about that dude anymore. Let him be the fall guy in Pittsburgh, don't care!

 

[wired14]

I never fully disliked Dubas as GM of the Leafs and, if you look at his full body of work there, I think he did some good things. The team didn’t win with him though, so his legacy will always be tainted. My biggest issue with him was that he seemed to get very interested in specific players - I noticed that he acquired some of the same players in Pittsburgh (Bunting, Acciari) as he had in Toronto. And whenever he got a guy who came from the OHL, you better believe that player had ties to the Soo Greyhounds. The thing with Karlsson never made sense and I thought it was funny when reports came out afterwards that he was working on acquiring him for Toronto, which made sense with their D core and where they were in terms of their team aspirations, but really made little sense for the Pens. It seemed like he just thought, screw it, I want the player and I already did a bunch of the work. I’ll just get home anyways.

 

[kevsh]

Kyle started out in Toronto with the philosophy that small skill can win and by the time he realized that wasn't the case the damage was done. He then tried to switch gears and added size/toughness but with a soft as butter core it made little difference.

(On a side note, Treliving is just continuing this trend of adding toughness but if he hasn't come to the same conclusion about this core yet, well, tbh it doesn't matter - we're clearly stuck with this core until they retire).

As for the Karlsson deal, it was similar to bringing in Tavares to Toronto. The Pens didn't need an offense-minded RD but had holes elsewhere. Toronto didn't need a 2C but the blueline needed work. In either case he made a major move and allocated precious cap space to an area in the roster that it wasn't required.

And that's maybe his biggest weakness, is that while on one hand he's done some miraculous things to squeeze under the cap and still ice a playoff team (in Toronto that is), he's badly misguided on the main concept of cap management. And that is, the basic formula of how that cap space should be allocated throughout the lineup.

In any case, good luck Pittsburgh. As long as he's calling the shots you're going to need it.