Would You Guarantee Dubas' Job For 2022-23 If It Meant Holding On To Our Futures?

[Garthinater]

The reason we lost the Montreal series is because Matthews and Marner didn't show up, and Tavares, who was one of Dubas' biggest moves, didn't even get to play in the series. Is that somehow Kyle's fault?


On the moves they make, the team they put together, where the team was 3 years ago compared to where it is now. I think he's done a good job, just hasn't got playoff success yet.


He's not the one who puts on the skates

And dubas decides who puts on skates to play for the leafs. Therefore, its his fault. The gm is responsible for their team. This isn't rocket science.

Its amazing how you can make so many excuses for Kyle.

 

[Mad hatter]

He has not got the team to the second round yet and that is his job. He has improved our prospects pool and made the leafs a more desirable place to though. Fire him or not I don’t care as long as we win.

 

[PromisedLand]

There's a big difference between building a team and simply assembling a bunch of players.

Toronto has better players, New York has a better team.

This!

 

[socko]

Dubas created the problem with Willie , instead of coming out with the ''we vs me'' bs and trying to get him on a discount as well as the whole ''this is going to take a lot longer than people would like'' crap he should have just cut to the chase and got him signed before camp .

instead he dragged it out , caved and looked like a bitch

some defend him , some defend the position of GM , others are just having there shits and giggles posting crap

Willy was a 20 goal 60 point guy and had not shown improvement from the previous season. I don't think his ask was reasonable. I was expecting Dubas to either make him sign with his comparables (Ehlers & Larkin) or sit out. I was confident Dubas was doing just that. And then he caved. That was the beginning of the end for him.

 

[Mess]

Why did everyone leave in such a hurry after the hire? If everyone was hip to the plan wouldn’t they have all stayed super friends and continued on?

The fact that everyone craps on Lou and Hunter’s work also suggests a very clear regime change and new way of doing business as a course correction. Not a continuous plan. Otherwise why would anyone need to differentiate so clearly between one phase of the Shanaplan and another under the two GM’s?

Checkmate !!!

You're coming off a 100 year franchise best regular season, after being bottom of the league just 2 years earlier, and to move to the next arbitrary Dubas as GM phase, that means your current successful GM, Director of Amateur scouting and soon your head coach would all be pushed out, with the organization coming off a game 7 playoff loss.

If that was actually the goal of the Shanaplan to promote one that didn't need promoting, and lose your other 3 core management types as a result, putting your management team in chaos then it was very poorly thought out plan and clearly nobody but Dubas was on board.

 

[4thline]

an opinion based on fact like what players signed for in Tampa after Stamkos took a discount or in Boston

but hey you do you and keep on making fairy tales to defend Dubie

You mean the Tampa with the documented and well known beneficial tax structure in a city of perpetual summer where players can have relative anonymity and the Boston where the great contracts stem from players breaking out *after* committing long term?

Maybe Tavares taking a steep discount could have won them over. Maybe. But his contract didn't raise their asks.

 

[Stephen]

There wasn't a power grab. Stop misrepresenting what happened.

No, it doesn't say anything about what he thought about the Leaf situation. All it says is that Lou chose to be a GM instead of a senior advisor - something that is not all that unusual. None of this equates to a "power grab" by Dubas, which is the false claim you've been spreading.

Nobody gets gifted the GM job of what we are told is the flag ship franchise of the NHL, causing the turnover of an entire front office without flexing their might.

You seriously pushing the narrative that “Dubas was a good guy who just patiently waited for his turn?”

 

[Mickey Marner]

Dubas created the problem with Willie , instead of coming out with the ''we vs me'' bs and trying to get him on a discount as well as the whole ''this is going to take a lot longer than people would like'' crap he should have just cut to the chase and got him signed before camp .

instead he dragged it out , caved and looked like a bitch

some defend him , some defend the position of GM , others are just having there shits and giggles posting crap

Yep, that was the moment to put his foot down. Rewarding the longest holdout of the salary cap era with a generous contract set a poor precedence. That taught 16 & 34 that you can get what you want by being a malcontent and they subsequently took us to the cleaners.

Should've bridged him, traded him or sat him the whole season before rewarding his holdout with that deal.

 

[Garthinater]

Yep. Same. I probably have hundreds of posts from back then saying Nylander shouldn't get the Pastrnak contract (or anywhere close really) and let him sit if need be.

That contract set the stage.

Austons agent knew from that moment on that he could get what ever he wanted.

After the auston deal, marners agent had all the leverage.

The funny thing is that we are 2 years in the future and still no rfa's are getting deals like 16 and 34.

 

[justashadowof]

And dubas decides who puts on skates to play for the leafs. Therefore, its his fault. The gm is responsible for their team. This isn't rocket science.

Its amazing how you can make so many excuses for Kyle.

Not to mention that he handpicked the coach of the team as well! The coach who doesn't seem capable of making an in-game adjustment if his life depended upon it.

 

[Stephen]

Checkmate !!!

You're coming off a 100 year franchise best regular season, after being bottom of the league just 2 years earlier, and to move to the next arbitrary Dubas as GM phase, that means your current successful GM, Director of Amateur scouting and soon your head coach would all be pushed out, with the organization coming off a game 7 playoff loss.

If that was actually the goal of the Shanaplan to promote one that didn't need promoting, and lose your other 3 core management types as a result, then it was very poorly thought out and clearly nobody but Dubas was on board.

It is insanity to suggest that Shanahan looked at his day planner in June 2018 and said “hmm we just came off a 105 point season which is great and all for Lou but I had it written in my day planner from 2015 that it’s time to give Kyle that promotion he didn’t ask for or demand.”

Yeah. Ok!

 

[Dekes For Days]

We finished 6th in the league, while playing weaker teams than we normally would have.

We finished with a 113 point pace, great underlying metrics, and there's no evidence our competition was weaker.

You don't even participate in gdt's or discuss the team in any other capacity.

That's not true at all. I discuss everything about this team, and unlike most, I do it with substantiation.

But you've created this stance where Dubas is "right" no matter what happens.

That's also not true at all. I evaluate the GM properly, based on what they did.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

But my problem with Dubas is he’s not executing the vision with actual success. So I don’t care who does it, as long as someone does it properly. Just like I don’t care about Mitch Marner if we can get someone who can do his job better.

I think my thing with Dubas, and really in general, is where does the responsibility and accountability lie.

It is easy for people to say the fire the GM or fire the coach or make these moves. Sometimes it makes sense, and others it doesn't. I think eventually there gets to the point where Dubas does his job extremely well and still gets ousted just to make a change, but I don't think that happens after 3 years. Not unless he starts being an active problem by making terrible moves, etc.

When I am evaluating Dubas, I look at where the team should be based on what he built. Ultimately, he can't guarantee success. No GM can. He can only give them the best possible chance to win and I don't think there is any doubt in most people's minds that the Leafs should have been able to make it out of the 1st round in at least the past 2, if not the past 3, years we've made the playoffs and likely make a fairly deep run. Maybe it is only a hard fought second round exit or CF exit, and not a Stanley Cup, but we've seen worse teams make it farther than we have.

So I look at Dubas and see that most things have gone fairly well for him. If there was a weakness (top 4 defense, getting some better depth, etc.), he was fairly quick and effective in addressing it. He's taken some risks that have not always panned out (i.e. Sparks), and some more recent moves (i.e. Foligno and signing Thornton) were a little bit of a head scratcher for me, but I can point out any top GM in the league and say the exact same thing. And his replacement will almost certainly not be any different in that regard.

My main concern is that you can do a lot worse than Dubas and likely not significantly better, and even if you do better, there is still no more of a guarantee that the Leafs make it out of the 1st round... And meanwhile we see Dubas go to another team and win a Cup or make the CF two years in a row and hear people are saying "that is what would have happened to us if we kept Dubas".

Eventually, the guys on the ice need to perform and we've seen some guys really step up (Matthews, Nylander, etc.) and others who really have not (Marner, our goalies on occasion, a bunch of guys that Dubas quickly dumped when it clearly was not going to work out for them, etc.)

 

[Dekes For Days]

Did you know that as a % of the Cap both Matthews and Marner contracts were lower than Crosby & Ovechkin second contract. And that Crosby's second contract was 5 years?

It was more than just Crosby and Ovechkin. Funny enough, if we were to rank every single player who signed a post-ELC contract in the cap era, the pre-signing period for Matthews/Marner ranks higher than their contracts would. But this place has zero clue about proper contract valuation.

 

[PromisedLand]

If you fire him now here are the 3 options .

1. Hire an internal GM, and that isn't any better.

2. Hire an external GM and in their first 5 weeks there is the Expansion Draft, Entry Draft, UFA/RFA. Just asking for a disaster. That's assuming you can hire one the same day you fire Dubas.

3. Do the three events in #2 without a GM

Those are all terrible ideas. Dubas has only been GM for 3 years. He's only had 1 season with 82 games FFS. It's really unfair to get rid of him that quick, it looks bad on the organization if a GM lifespan is 3 years.

Hell Brian Burke had 5 years, never made the playoffs, and traded 2 firsts for Kessel

Different situations

Burke was never given a green light for a rebuild. Also, pension plan (then owners of the leafs) only cared about making the playoffs not a rebuild (same with JFJ).

Dubas on the other hand was handed the GM position on a silver platter
- team on the rise
- penty of cap space

burke wasnt given the same situation. dubas has screwed the pooch so bad that there has to be a new guy that has to fix this. dubas cannot be trusted

 

[Garthinater]

Who checked to see if Shanny was up to being the president of an NHL team? His experience was an NHL gig handing out punishments. How does that prepare someone to run a hockey team? He never even worked in an NHL team's front office in a lower role, even as a coach or scout or anything.

Good point.

We have:

A rookie president.

A rookie gm.

A rookie coach.

Who thought that was a good idea?

 

[keonsbitterness]

The only reason I like Dubas is because he is doing a good job. Nothing would improve by firing him.

The implication I get from that statement is that you're calling him the best GM in the league.

Are you?

 

[Carltons Cup]

Maybe it's just me, but I see Dubas as too "buddy-buddy" with some of the core and younger players. Like he can't wait for his turn to play Fortnite with the boys.

Part of me wishes that he would somehow come across as more of a "prick" and increase accountability for players who haven't lived up to post season challenges.

 

[PromisedLand]

and last year against another weak team it was something else

but you keep having your internet fun because i doubt anyone on the Leafs BOD is anywhere as thrilled as you are with the Dubes performance so far

and judging by the way Dubie looked in his year end presser he isn't anywhere near as confident in his job security as you seem to be , he looked like a dead man walking to me and he's probably still dancing to save his job as we speak

Dubas thinks he is the smartest dude ever to live on this planet. So smar that he bet his job and career on it. AND still doesn't have the decency to resign. the hypocrisy of the situation is just......

 

[Garthinater]

Not to mention that he handpicked the coach of the team as well! The coach who doesn't seem capable of making an in-game adjustment if his life depended upon it.

Apparently dubas hired keefe without even interviewing any other candidates!

I'm sure there's a word for people who give good jobs to their friends instead of those who are qualified.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Nobody gets gifted the GM job of what we are told is the flag ship franchise of the NHL, causing the turnover of an entire front office without flexing their might.

There was no "power grab". You have provided nothing but personal speculation, in the face of actual evidence. Stop misrepresenting what happened.

A talented, highly-sought-after individual taking over as GM, as planned, for a 75-year old, after years as assistant GM (where he won a Calder Cup) and interim GM (where he handled franchise-defining trades like Kessel), is not this unusual occurrence you paint it as, that could only be explained by some forced hostile takeover.

Everybody was aware of the plan. The plan was followed through, on schedule, as expected.

 

[Dekes For Days]

The implication I get from that statement is that you're calling him the best GM in the league.

That's not what I said at all.

 

[Stephen]

I think my thing with Dubas, and really in general, is where does the responsibility and accountability lie.

It is easy for people to say the fire the GM or fire the coach or make these moves. Sometimes it makes sense, and others it doesn't. I think eventually there gets to the point where Dubas does his job extremely well and still gets ousted just to make a change, but I don't think that happens after 3 years. Not unless he starts being an active problem by making terrible moves, etc.

When I am evaluating Dubas, I look at where the team should be based on what he built. Ultimately, he can't guarantee success. No GM can. He can only give them the best possible chance to win and I don't think there is any doubt in most people's minds that the Leafs should have been able to make it out of the 1st round in at least the past 2, if not the past 3, years we've made the playoffs and likely make a fairly deep run. Maybe it is only a hard fought second round exit or CF exit, and not a Stanley Cup, but we've seen worse teams make it farther than we have.

So I look at Dubas and see that most things have gone fairly well for him. If there was a weakness (top 4 defense, getting some better depth, etc.), he was fairly quick and effective in addressing it. He's taken some risks that have not always panned out (i.e. Sparks), and some more recent moves (i.e. Foligno and signing Thornton) were a little bit of a head scratcher for me, but I can point out any top GM in the league and say the exact same thing. And his replacement will almost certainly not be any different in that regard.

My main concern is that you can do a lot worse than Dubas and likely not significantly better, and even if you do better, there is still no more of a guarantee that the Leafs make it out of the 1st round... And meanwhile we see Dubas go to another team and win a Cup or make the CF two years in a row and hear people are saying "that is what would have happened to us if we kept Dubas".

Eventually, the guys on the ice need to perform and we've seen some guys really step up (Matthews, Nylander, etc.) and others who really have not (Marner, our goalies on occasion, a bunch of guys that Dubas quickly dumped when it clearly was not going to work out for them, etc.)

If you look back on the commentary about whether Dubas and Shanahan should be fired during the series meltdown vs Montreal I felt that firing the management group could cause more harm than good to suddenly make big changes and have a new house cleaning mandate.

I like the broad direction Dubas has promised but not the execution. He could be on the road to dismissal I’m not even sure I would fire him next year if we see a repeat but he would firmly be on the hot seat for me. And I think he deserves a lot of scrutiny for his work to date.

 

[Garthinater]

I think my thing with Dubas, and really in general, is where does the responsibility and accountability lie.

It is easy for people to say the fire the GM or fire the coach or make these moves. Sometimes it makes sense, and others it doesn't. I think eventually there gets to the point where Dubas does his job extremely well and still gets ousted just to make a change, but I don't think that happens after 3 years. Not unless he starts being an active problem by making terrible moves, etc.

When I am evaluating Dubas, I look at where the team should be based on what he built. Ultimately, he can't guarantee success. No GM can. He can only give them the best possible chance to win and I don't think there is any doubt in most people's minds that the Leafs should have been able to make it out of the 1st round in at least the past 2, if not the past 3, years we've made the playoffs and likely make a fairly deep run. Maybe it is only a hard fought second round exit or CF exit, and not a Stanley Cup, but we've seen worse teams make it farther than we have.

So I look at Dubas and see that most things have gone fairly well for him. If there was a weakness (top 4 defense, getting some better depth, etc.), he was fairly quick and effective in addressing it. He's taken some risks that have not always panned out (i.e. Sparks), and some more recent moves (i.e. Foligno and signing Thornton) were a little bit of a head scratcher for me, but I can point out any top GM in the league and say the exact same thing. And his replacement will almost certainly not be any different in that regard.

My main concern is that you can do a lot worse than Dubas and likely not significantly better, and even if you do better, there is still no more of a guarantee that the Leafs make it out of the 1st round... And meanwhile we see Dubas go to another team and win a Cup or make the CF two years in a row and hear people are saying "that is what would have happened to us if we kept Dubas".

Eventually, the guys on the ice need to perform and we've seen some guys really step up (Matthews, Nylander, etc.) and others who really have not (Marner, our goalies on occasion, a bunch of guys that Dubas quickly dumped when it clearly was not going to work out for them, etc.)

What about dubas' performance makes you think when we fire him he will be able to lead a team to CF?

I doubt he even gets another shot as gm. Might have to go back to being an agent.

Dubas walked into one of the best situations a gm could ask for. A 105 point team, star rfa's, lots of cap space, owners that want to win, etc, etc.

Yet after 3 years we have either regressed or stayed the same.

Dubas needs to be fired. He has wasted 3 of the most promising years I can remember with this team.

 

[Mess]

It is insanity to suggest that Shanahan looked at his day planner in June 2018 and said “hmm we just came off a 105 point season which is great and all for Lou but I had it written in my day planner from 2015 that it’s time to give Kyle that promotion he didn’t ask for or demand.”

Yeah. Ok!

Plan A is promote and assistant GM to GM and cut your core 3 other management types.

Or Plan B.

You keep your current GM, letting him continue his work, who just restore stability to an organization, that he inherited coming off missing the playoffs 9 of the last 10 years, and was working in lock step with his head coach to produce a record setting season. You allow your Director of amateur scouting Hunter to continue working while giving him a slight boost up to full assistant GM as well, and you let kid Kyle walk away to another organization. You wouldn't miss a beat, and Hunter could easily replace Dubas assistant GM duties after his departure. Things keep moving forward smoothly and interrupted.

Its June 2018 so lets go with Plan A.

PS. The last 3 years of turmoil, disappointment and dysfunction makes sense when an organization cuts 3/4 of its core brain trust, and turns it over to a green horn GM who thinks he knows better then everyone in the organization, because he can use a fancy excel spreadsheet.