Will dubas ever try a major trade?

[Stephen]

We were meant to be competitive that year. What's the cost of renting a Johnsson + Kapanen for a year? Something around a 1st+2nd? We got that value out of them as well as a 1st + Anderson + McCann on top.

Playing Marleau + 1 million dollar UFAs instead of Kap+ Johnsson isn't an asset-neutral move, you have less value on the roster as a result of that move even if you recoup some picks for them and save one on Marleau.

No, I don’t subscribe to the constant churning of assets and galaxy brain justification of own rentals, one year evaluations for Kapanen and Johnsson, etc. There’s a lot of turnover and cannibalizing of assets that doesn’t foster organizational stability and homegrown development and promotion which was part of the original appeal of the Shanaplan for myself. We’ve entered into a big market trade happy, blockbuster cycle and I don’t see this road yielding a strong homegrown development process. And from now I think we’re going to be moving forward with not enough cap space, not enough depth, not enough picks, not enough prospects.

 

[Martin Skoula]

No, I don’t subscribe to the constant churning of assets and galaxy brain justification of own rentals, one year evaluations for Kapanen and Johnsson, etc. There’s a lot of turnover and cannibalizing of assets that doesn’t foster organizational stability and homegrown development and promotion which was part of the original appeal of the Shanaplan for myself. We’ve entered into a big market trade happy, blockbuster cycle and I don’t see this road yielding a strong homegrown development process. And from now I think we’re going to be moving forward with not enough cap space, not enough depth, not enough picks, not enough prospects.

Sure I just don't see how Kapanen and Johnsson fit any of that, we got an extra year out of them and got more assets in return for them than that extra year cost us. Unless you wanted to bail on a competitive year to accommodate Marleau's salary more comfortably, this was the best of both worlds. If you don't bail on competing and try to pick up 2 middle 6 wingers at the deadline, you'd probably end up spending the same draft capital it cost to dump Marleau for 2 months of rentals instead of a full season of guys who already know our system.

If we're going down the captain hindsight road, every team that doesn't win the cup was wrong for not selling off all of their upcoming UFAs every deadline.

 

[deprw]

You say Dubas would be stupid to start retooling now, perhaps you meant to say something else because it seems like retooling is exactly what he's doing.

I would move on from Marner myself, our 1st round opponent next season will probably be tougher then CLB or MTL so I see no reason for optimism. I have trouble believing Marner will ever "turn into gold" and building on this core as you suggest ... I just don't see how that's doable without freeing up some cap space. Oh sure, we'll shuffle around some spare parts but we can't add anyone meaningful the way things are now.

I see us retooling if we trade away Rielly, Marner, Tavares, Matthews or Nylander. Other than that we are tweaking our roster. You change players like Andersen that failed here and try to find better add. Off course there will be roster turnover every year. Our defense it's basicly on it's prime and it worked fine in the playoffs. We can add Liljegren and Sandin internally. Add depth dman, but if we don't move any of our top4 it's also tweaking. We had Campbell on net also, so we aren't retooling if we continue on that. Forward group will change a little, but I think we'll resign Galchenyuk and add some cheap UFAs that we think are undervalued on the market. Robertson is hopefully sliding in.

If you look up UFA market there isn't any great adds for us and I don't think we should resign Hyman to that contract he wants. Turning Marner to gold meant trading him for better player. I don't know if it's an assumption that Dubas should be able to do that, but I don't know if this summer we can use that cap space effectively if we trade him for futures. I think that is something you do next summer, if we get same results. In any case if there is good hockey for Marner to us available I think Dubas should do it.

Next year we will face better team than Canadiens or Blue Jackets on paper, but I'm not concerned now. All tops teams are bleeding assets or will be pretty soon. Panthers has one year left of Barkovs contract, Avalanche will probably lose their captain, Islanders are bleeding assets, Tampa Bay will lose several players, Boston has to retool, Carolina and Dallas will lose assets. I think this is pretty good summer to tweak your roster and go once more. Starting over now would be stupid, retooling by trading Marner would be wise, but it's not easy stunt to pull trough and I wouldn't do it just for sake of doing it. Next summer I might, but not now.

 

[Stephen]

Sure I just don't see how Kapanen and Johnsson fit any of that, we got an extra year out of them and got more assets in return for them than that extra year cost us. Unless you wanted to bail on a competitive year to accommodate Marleau's salary more comfortably, this was the best of both worlds. If you don't bail on competing and try to pick up 2 middle 6 wingers at the deadline, you'd probably end up spending the same draft capital it cost to dump Marleau for 2 months of rentals instead of a full season of guys who already know our system.

If we're going down the captain hindsight road, every team that doesn't win the cup was wrong for not selling off all of their upcoming UFAs every deadline.

It’s not really a captain hindsight issue so much as realizing the organization took a U-Turn at the Tavares signing and is no longer going in the same direction as we once thought and every move and calculation is a sign post that takes us farther and farther away from the original Shanaplan vision.

That is of a draft and development juggernaut team based on speed and skill. Everything can be rationalized and there are pros and cons to everything this group does. But from a guiding principles POV of franchise building, we’re a big market video game.

 

[Lightsol]

I have trouble believing Marner will ever "turn into gold" and building on this core as you suggest

I mean, we saw him "turn into gold" in the first series with Boston. Maybe that suggest that the issue is less "Marner can't dominate a series" and more "Marner can be shut down if the guy who scores the goals on his line can be shut down", which covers his last three playoffs? Which tells me his line needs a second scoring threat, or you know, broken away from Matthews so that the other team can't simply concentrate on shutting both of them down at once...

 

[CDN24]

By round:

1: -1
2: ---
3: +1
4: +2
5: --
6: +1
7: +3

To be fair you have to include the 2021/22/23 picks he has acquired or traded away. He maybe plus 6 in those 3 drafts but he is also -9 in the next 3 having traded away 9 of his 21 picks. include these 3 drafts currently he is
1: -1 - the 2021 first so minus 2 total
2: --- and still even as he has all his 2nd rounders for next 3 drafts
3: +1 but now remove the 2021 and 2022 picks for a net -1
4 +2 but remove the 2021 and 2022 4ths so even on that one too
5: --- even but the 2022 pick is gone
6: +1 but the 2022 pick is gone so even
7: +3 but the 2021 and 2023 picks are gone so really only plus 1.

So really he has traded away 2 1st rounders and traded down in another draft, he's minus 1 in the 3rd round, -1 in the 5th and plus 1 in the 7th.

So all he has managed to add on the draft pick front is add net one 7th rounder and down 2 1sts, a 3rd and a 5th. Hardly looks like your 1st statement praising him for collecting so many picks.

 

[leaffaninvancouver]

Apart from trading Nylander, it would need to be a massive trade due to caphit alone. How many teams have 11 million in cap space, or have an expensive star they want to trade back?

 

[zeke]

To be fair you have to include the 2021/22/23 picks he has acquired or traded away. He maybe plus 6 in those 3 drafts but he is also -9 in the next 3 having traded away 9 of his 21 picks. include these 3 drafts currently he is
1: -1 - the 2021 first so minus 2 total
2: --- and still even as he has all his 2nd rounders for next 3 drafts
3: +1 but now remove the 2021 and 2022 picks for a net -1
4 +2 but remove the 2021 and 2022 4ths so even on that one too
5: --- even but the 2022 pick is gone
6: +1 but the 2022 pick is gone so even
7: +3 but the 2021 and 2023 picks are gone so really only plus 1.

So really he has traded away 2 1st rounders and traded down in another draft, he's minus 1 in the 3rd round, -1 in the 5th and plus 1 in the 7th.

So all he has managed to add on the draft pick front is add net one 7th rounder and down 2 1sts, a 3rd and a 5th. Hardly looks like your 1st statement praising him for collecting so many picks.

we'll see what happens there by draft day.

 

[BlueForever75]

Reilly would be considered a massive trade. Reilly+ would be a blockbuster and tone setting move.

 

[CDN24]

we'll see what happens there by draft day.

See by draft day??? the picks are gone. Other than the 7th he just traded these were all gone when you made the comments on Saturday. Sure he could acquire a bunch of picks between now and each of those drafts but he has to trade something away to do it. Trade one of the big 4 and you could even gain a couple 1sts but that is not the point.

You praised him for acquiring a ton picks (which turn out to be 6th or 7th rounders for the most part) in the 2018 through 2020 drafts while ignoring the 1st, 2 3rds, 2 4ths. 5th, 6th and 2 7ths he has traded away from the next 3. Dubas is many things but a net accumulator of picks he isn't.

 

[The Podium]

That’s a lot of cap dumps due to poor cap management, and picks for rentals.

I think you have broken the record for "due to poor cap management" posts in the last 24 hours

 

[Kurtz]

2 major trades so far, imo:

1. Kadri deal
2. Muzzin deal

I have a hunch that we'll get a 3rd major trade soon - for Kuemper+Garland.

 

[supermann_98]

If a major trade involves one of his core 4 contracts that HE signed, no ... he will never make a major trade.

This is why IF they make the playoffs next year and WHEN they get knocked out in the first round if they DO, he and Shanny have to be fired for the good of the organization so another decision maker will make a shakeup of the core 4

 

[The CyNick]

we'll see what happens there by draft day.

Like every year, he'll trade down and the Dubas minions will write and post how he dominated the draft.

Then we play the waiting game for those picks to materialize into NHL players.

He's definitely the best at winning the day among Twitter analytics guys. No debate there.

 

[Martin Skoula]

It’s not really a captain hindsight issue so much as realizing the organization took a U-Turn at the Tavares signing and is no longer going in the same direction as we once thought and every move and calculation is a sign post that takes us farther and farther away from the original Shanaplan vision.

That is of a draft and development juggernaut team based on speed and skill. Everything can be rationalized and there are pros and cons to everything this group does. But from a guiding principles POV of franchise building, we’re a big market video game.

I'd argue not trading JVR/Bozak/Komarov/Gardiner and trading 2nds for Boyle and Plekanec set the tone before Tavares was even on the radar. Hell Lou went so hard after Stamkos that he scared him off. I agree with you that we should have stuck to a slower and more intensive draft and development process early on, but by the time Dubas stepped in we already had our entire prospect pool on the Marlies or Leafs with Korshkov and Grundstrom as the next man up. Going back and slowing things down to make up for Hunter's draft gap might have been a better long term move in hindsight, but that would be a hard sell at the time with the 3 RFAs needing big contracts and us not having playoff doubts about them yet. We'd have the same protests on the board about Dubas wasting the core's time with an extended rebuild when we could have had Tavares/Panarin.

 

[The CyNick]

I'd argue not trading JVR/Bozak/Komarov/Gardiner and trading 2nds for Boyle and Plekanec set the tone before Tavares was even on the radar. Hell Lou went so hard after Stamkos that he scared him off. I agree with you that we should have stuck to a slower and more intensive draft and development process early on, but by the time Dubas stepped in we already had our entire prospect pool on the Marlies or Leafs with Korshkov and Grundstrom as the next man up. Going back and slowing things down to make up for Hunter's draft gap might have been a better long term move in hindsight, but that would be a hard sell at the time with the 3 RFAs needing big contracts and us not having playoff doubts about them yet. We'd have the same protests on the board about Dubas wasting the core's time with an extended rebuild when we could have had Tavares/Panarin.

I think it's fair to debate the choice to not trade JVR/Bozak/etc. I think ultimately I would have, but I do think there's value in getting to the playoffs as quick as possible with a young group. So I get why those choices were made.

The biggest error was the Tavares signing to $11M. That was the fuse to burn what good had been done under Lou. That move guaranteed this team would have no depth. It guaranteed that Matthews and Marner would be signing massive deals beyond what they earned in ELC. And the pain isn't over. It will continue for the foreseeable future.

If you told Tavares that the Leafs would love to have him but they could only afford $8M per. If he rejects that (with a wife looking to return home to raise a family and build a career and an apparent desire to play for his boyhood team) the so be it.

It then sends a message to Matthews, Marner that we have an internal cap. We don't care what anyone else is paid. You want to be in this program you get in line soldier and do what is needed to help the team. If they are only concerned with maximizing dollars, then great, ship them out and enjoy the massive return. Likely they sign shorter prove it deals and the Leafs can build around them. Then you hope to build a Tampa like culture where elite players take less than their market value to raise Cups over their head year after year.

 

[Gary Nylund]

I see us retooling if we trade away Rielly, Marner, Tavares, Matthews or Nylander. Other than that we are tweaking our roster. You change players like Andersen that failed here and try to find better add. Off course there will be roster turnover every year. Our defense it's basicly on it's prime and it worked fine in the playoffs. We can add Liljegren and Sandin internally. Add depth dman, but if we don't move any of our top4 it's also tweaking. We had Campbell on net also, so we aren't retooling if we continue on that. Forward group will change a little, but I think we'll resign Galchenyuk and add some cheap UFAs that we think are undervalued on the market. Robertson is hopefully sliding in.

If you look up UFA market there isn't any great adds for us and I don't think we should resign Hyman to that contract he wants. Turning Marner to gold meant trading him for better player. I don't know if it's an assumption that Dubas should be able to do that, but I don't know if this summer we can use that cap space effectively if we trade him for futures. I think that is something you do next summer, if we get same results. In any case if there is good hockey for Marner to us available I think Dubas should do it.

Next year we will face better team than Canadiens or Blue Jackets on paper, but I'm not concerned now. All tops teams are bleeding assets or will be pretty soon. Panthers has one year left of Barkovs contract, Avalanche will probably lose their captain, Islanders are bleeding assets, Tampa Bay will lose several players, Boston has to retool, Carolina and Dallas will lose assets. I think this is pretty good summer to tweak your roster and go once more. Starting over now would be stupid, retooling by trading Marner would be wise, but it's not easy stunt to pull trough and I wouldn't do it just for sake of doing it. Next summer I might, but not now.

Turn Marner into gold by trading him - I didn't realize that was what you meant, I agree completely!

I mean, we saw him "turn into gold" in the first series with Boston. Maybe that suggest that the issue is less "Marner can't dominate a series" and more "Marner can be shut down if the guy who scores the goals on his line can be shut down", which covers his last three playoffs? Which tells me his line needs a second scoring threat, or you know, broken away from Matthews so that the other team can't simply concentrate on shutting both of them down at once...

That was a long time ago, much too long for a guy with his cap hit.

 

[hamzarocks]

I'd argue not trading JVR/Bozak/Komarov/Gardiner and trading 2nds for Boyle and Plekanec set the tone before Tavares was even on the radar. Hell Lou went so hard after Stamkos that he scared him off. I agree with you that we should have stuck to a slower and more intensive draft and development process early on, but by the time Dubas stepped in we already had our entire prospect pool on the Marlies or Leafs with Korshkov and Grundstrom as the next man up. Going back and slowing things down to make up for Hunter's draft gap might have been a better long term move in hindsight, but that would be a hard sell at the time with the 3 RFAs needing big contracts and us not having playoff doubts about them yet. We'd have the same protests on the board about Dubas wasting the core's time with an extended rebuild when we could have had Tavares/Panarin.

Not trading Gardiner was on Dubas, as he was on the team in 2018-2019

Agree we should have dealt at least one if not 2 of JVR/Komo/Bozak if we had no desire in bringing any of them back. Komarov should have been dealt at the minimum we had to make room for Kapanen and AJ to get a larger role.

The 2nd for Boyle was a good trade and one Lou and any competent GM would make again and again. We had multiple 2nd round picks, we were fighting for a playoff spot and were close to getting in. Boyle was a good 4C in 2017 and helped us down the stretch and into the playoffs. We got the young players' experience and played a hard-fought and competitive series was the President trophy winning Capitals. Lou didn't sacrifice our 1st in that draft but paid an extra 2nd in order to help build toward a winning culture and give the players a higher shot at making the playoffs (which they did)

The 2nd rounder for Plek was pretty bad, as Plek was worse than Boyle and really our 4C spot should have been identified the offseason prior. We didn't deal for McDonough that year as I remember the price was Lilijgren + Kapanen + 1st for McDonough + Miller which at the time the team wasn't comfortable doing, as 2018 was our true first year with expectations and reasonable goal of winning a series.

Leafs should have dealt Komorov for sure in 2018, Dubas probably should have dealt Gardiner in 2019 after we acquired Muzzin making him redundant, and in the 2020 offseason Andersen should have been dealt with the team clearly setting up Campbell to be the starter moving forward and the team not having the ability to afford Andersen on another extended contract after this season.

I can atleast see a defense for JVR, Bozak, Hyman in those years. Rielly should also be dealt if he doesn't extend and having him serve as a own rental is inexcusably incompetent

 

[34]

The core 4 are overpaid and not tradable other than Nylander. He is the only one on a good contract, that other GM’s would be looking at.

 

[Man Bear Pig]

Gross wtf. We gave up all those guys + all those picks. This deserves its own thread tbh.

Maybe we should hold the players accountable as well? Say what you want about Dubas, but I think most will agree he's went out and made moves to improve the roster over the years. He's gambled for sure on guys like Foligno, but he had to. And I'd guarantee that the same people who hated moving picks for guys like Foligno are the same who'd complain all summer if he did nothing.

 

[Martin Skoula]

Not trading Gardiner was on Dubas, as he was on the team in 2018-2019

Agree we should have dealt at least one if not 2 of JVR/Komo/Bozak if we had no desire in bringing any of them back. Komarov should have been dealt at the minimum we had to make room for Kapanen and AJ to get a larger role.

The 2nd for Boyle was a good trade and one Lou and any competent GM would make again and again. We had multiple 2nd round picks, we were fighting for a playoff spot and were close to getting in. Boyle was a good 4C in 2017 and helped us down the stretch and into the playoffs. We got the young players' experience and played a hard-fought and competitive series was the President trophy winning Capitals. Lou didn't sacrifice our 1st in that draft but paid an extra 2nd in order to help build toward a winning culture and give the players a higher shot at making the playoffs (which they did)

The 2nd rounder for Plek was pretty bad, as Plek was worse than Boyle and really our 4C spot should have been identified the offseason prior. We didn't deal for McDonough that year as I remember the price was Lilijgren + Kapanen + 1st for McDonough + Miller which at the time the team wasn't comfortable doing, as 2018 was our true first year with expectations and reasonable goal of winning a series.

Leafs should have dealt Komorov for sure in 2018, Dubas probably should have dealt Gardiner in 2019 after we acquired Muzzin making him redundant, and in the 2020 offseason Andersen should have been dealt with the team clearly setting up Campbell to be the starter moving forward and the team not having the ability to afford Andersen on another extended contract after this season.

I can atleast see a defense for JVR, Bozak, Hyman in those years. Rielly should also be dealt if he doesn't extend and having him serve as a own rental is inexcusably incompetent

The only thing worse than going full rebuild or full contention is a half assed version of both. What I'm saying is that as soon as Lou started keeping own rentals and trading picks for 4th liners, we don't have a choice but to continue pushing because we made a choice not to turn our own rentals into a pool of meaningful ELC talent. Had he moved Bozak and co for picks, they'd be fighting for middle-6 spots right now and we could talk about moving Kerfoot/Mikheyev/Rielly/Hyman without worrying about who's going to replace them for cheap.

Boyle for a 2nd isn't bad in a vacuum, but it served as a signal that we're expecting to be taken seriously now. You can't rent Boyle and then turn around and trade Bozak/JVR the same deadline, you either go all in for that run or sell off what you can and if the kids make the playoffs that's a cherry on top.

Dubas made most of the "win now" moves, I'm not going to argue that, but I would say that he was locked into making those moves based on the team/prospect pool he walked into. There was no one ready to step up into middle-6/bottom-4 roles that wasn't already on the team, Brooks/Grundstrom/Moore/Bracco/Korshkov isn't a good enough "next wave" to replace Hyman/Brown/Kapanen/Johnsson once they started pricing themselves off the team. Hunter's missed drafts and the Bozak/JVR/Komarov own rentals are the difference between us and the next echelon of teams IMO, that's a ton of dead value.

Ironically enough Dubas should have been the GM after Nonis and lead the tear down and drafts (we'd likely have pieces like Aho and Gourde in the system on top of everything else), once we had 2-3 years post-Matthews draft of selling off rentals and picking ~10th overall, Lou would have an actual asset pool to work with and use his Jedi mind tricks or whatever to trick the RFAs into taking 25+% haircuts like everyone says he can do.

 

[ULF_55]

Keep running it back mentally. Let's see how it turns out. I'm not confident. Good chance Leafs draw Florida, Tampa or Boston in the first round. And it's possible that run it back mentality may put Leafs on the outside looking in.

I don't think there is an appetite to move any of the double digits.

I'm not expecting much, but maybe they'll shock us.

 

[ULF_55]

Apart from trading Nylander, it would need to be a massive trade due to caphit alone. How many teams have 11 million in cap space, or have an expensive star they want to trade back?

I don't see it happening, but the receiving team doesn't need to have 11 million in cap space as they'd likely sent most of the cap back in players.

 

[ULF_55]

Like every year, he'll trade down and the Dubas minions will write and post how he dominated the draft.

Then we play the waiting game for those picks to materialize into NHL players.

He's definitely the best at winning the day among Twitter analytics guys. No debate there.

I'm not really into advanced stats, kind of old school and rely on determinal stats, and supportive stats.

I'd also like to see +/- unqualified. Qualifying anything permits abuse.

One thing I'd really enjoy watching would be having the best goaltender in a series. Leafs used to have good goaltenders.

 

[deprw]

Not trading Gardiner was on Dubas, as he was on the team in 2018-2019

Gardiner busted his back that year and I don't think that he was healthy during deadline that year. It was mostly bad luck, because we could have used him in the playoffs or traded him, but we got 50% version of Gardiner for playoffs and there was no value for trading his rights in that condition after season.