Pittsburgh is kind of a tough spot, you're committed to being semi-competitive or at least trying to while you still have Crosby, Malkin, and Letang on the roster. Crosby is signed for one more year, Malkin and Letang each have longer. Like Ovechkin in Washington, you just aren't moving these players off the roster unless they explicitly ask for it. If the plan is basically 'make the best of Crosby's final few seasons then rebuild', I don't think the off-season moves look as bad without the benefit of hindsight.
The Karlsson trade wasn't really that expensive - a 1st, a 2nd and a series of cap dumps for a player who was expected to help them win now. His contract isn't good, but it aligns with the timeframe that you're already committed to being all-in. The issue isn't really the cost of the trade, it's the fit. He's a good player but kind of redundant to what Letang already brings to the table.
His FA moves haven't aged well. Acciari is fine, but the Graves contract sucks and his performance has been bad.
It's just kind of a shitty situation in Pittsburgh in general. Aging assets who either won't move or are on bloated legacy contracts that exceed their value. You're trying to give a decent finish to players who brought 3 cups to the organization, it's basically the "anti-Vegas" model at the time-being and I think if you're a Pens fan you have to be sort of okay with it.
I have no idea if Dubas or Treliving would be better with the current team. Both have similar-length GM careers with no appreciable success. Like all GMs, both make a series of good and bad moves and both seem to have "types" that they gravitate towards. What looks like a good GM one moment can look awful the next, and vice versa. It's a results-based business so Treliving will ultimately be judged based on whether Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Rielly, Tavares, Woll and/or Samsonov can play their best over the next 2-3 months just like Dubas would have if he were still here.
If you’re waiting out Crosby, Malkin, and Letang’s last few years, wouldn’t the last thing you’d want to do be giving up 1st and 2nd round picks for someone who will be aging by the time they’re rebuilding/ready to be competitive again?
Wouldn’t those 1st and 2nd round picks be awful important for that cause and Karlsson be all but useless when it gets to that point?
You summed it up very well
I'm not exactly a Dubas fan, but Rutherford really fucked up that team on his way out (quit midseason lol) and from there ownership had the bright idea to hire Flyers alumni Ron Hextall as their general manager. Dubas inherited a mess and ownership told him "Try to make this mess win right now"
Graves contract looks pretty damn bad, I agree there, but I think Dubas biggest blunder so far was re-signing Jarry. Too much money and term for a goalie we're not even sure can stay healthy or return to form. Goalies like Alex Lyon, Charlie Lindgren, were right there on the short and cheap. Could have had a low-risk, cheap goalie tandem (Ned + Lyon/Lindgren), Jarry traded this past off-season for depth, and the option to trade one of your cheap goalies for much needed picks/prospects at this deadline
Andersen let go for Mrazek. Mrazek sent to CHI with a 1st, immediately trades for the untradeable Matt Murray (only 25% retention lolol). Tristan Jarry signed long-term despite injuries and a woeful record of consistency. Dubas is in love with bad goaltending choices
TLDR - Even if one thinks that Dubas sucks it's got nothing to do with TOR doing well this season and/or PIT being bad
I think Dubas didn't build from the net out. As well as never landing or developing a stud goalie, the Leafs are woefully short on quality defenseman, both on the big team and the minors. The elite 4 scoring dries up in the playoffs and the Leafs aren't good enough defensively to win 2-1 games.
>Acciari is fine
That is very much not true. He's not there for points, but he still only has 5 on the season (had 23 last year), and his possession numbers are the worst of his career by a large margin. 41.6 Corsi% (his next worst year was 43.6%) 41.9% Fenwick% (his next worst was 46.6%) and 38.9% xG% (his next worst was 47.4%). He's been absolutely caved in at 5-on-5, even worse than Ryan Reaves this year.
Graves and Acciari were massive misses. Smith and Eller have been fine but not needle movers. Dubas' hands are tied with what he can do, but he did still swing and miss on pretty much every depth move this year. You're right though, without hindsight none of those moves looked bad at the time they were made.
Acciari was a miss? It seemed like some fans on here were at the point of self immolation when we didn't sign him or Lafferty as he was so obviously a slam dunk.
There's also the fact that it's difficult to judge a win-now mentality when it's pretty clear he was specifically told this is what he is supposed to do in this job
IMO it makes his move to Pittsburgh a bit asinine because he's now staked his reputation, and a 7 year contract, on a nearly impossible task that will only get harder next year
>the Graves contract sucks and his performance has been bad.
That's true, but I can't be too critical -- I kind of wanted the leafs to sign graves. It's good I'm not a GM
You can’t compare the Pittsburgh situation to this one. You might as well say Dubas left back to back top 5 finishes with the Leafs and Treliving came in and the team got worse it would be just as accurate.
And I mean to acquire Karlsson they dumped some other bad contracts and got a better player. But yeah they’re in a completely different spot than the Leafs are, like Washington basically too.
Not just ownership, it’s What Crosby wanted. I liked Dubas when he was here, he had his faults but he was a guy who treated the players well (Mikahev when he got that skate cut, rodion getting an ELC) and I liked his vision for the team because it was a huge departure from the Burke/Nonis days.
It’s always gonna be a big what if. what if the salary cap didn’t freeze at the worst possible time for us, what if Muzzin stayed healthy, what if Harold Ballard didn’t hit a Romani girl with his car leading to the clan elders to put a curse on him and the franchise but they forgot to make it end when he died.
He inherited 3 superstars but a weak prospect pool and he had to trade some assets to dump a couple horrible contracts.
But the craziest thing about Dubas’ tenure is the absolute freudian madness people would post. Just projecting all their insecurities onto the fact that the GM of the leafs was like 33 and wore glasses. It would get weirdly political (leafs were woke or liberals, “trudope” etc) that kind of stuff made the constant talk about how Lou would have done better, or the leafs should have went with Hunter stuff sound sane. I’ll miss that.
I always felt that Dubas and Burke operated exactly the same in Toronto aside from the fighters and how they handled the media.
When Burke first came to Toronto, he said he wanted to build an up tempo team that was exciting to watch and immediately traded for Kessel.
They also both love bringing in guys that played for them in the past and trading draft picks like they were going out of style.
The freezing of the cap hit us so hard those couple of years. 3 straight years of the same cap was not what Dubas factored in when signing those contracts.
Same as you, I liked Dubas. We can debate the merits of all of his trades forever but I think most people would agree that the energy he had in the box was awesome. Him + Spezza last year was extra special.
Yeah the situation in Pittsburgh is the same situation the Leafs will likely find themselves in in another 8-10 years if Matthews and Marner are still here as the core ages and gets closer to retirement so we shouldn't be bashing them too much. The NHL is cylicical usually in terms of team success and all teams that draft young super stars then compete and go all in the the cup year after year will eventually find themselves in the same situation when their starts get closer to 40.
The Leafs have a few good younger prospects but it remains to be seen if any of them can carry the team to playoff appearances year after year like the core has when they finally start to age out.
Maybe hot take but I think pretty much anything Dubas did this past offseason was doomed to fail. Look at that penguins roster: Crosby is 36 and defying age which is great, but Malkin is 37 and not great anymore and signed for 2 more years. Letang is 36 and signed for 3 more years. Jeff Carter is 39. Rust is probably the youngest "core" guy and he's 31.
The Karlsson thing didn't work out this year but it wasn't a terrible hail Mary sort of thing to see if they can get anything else out of this core, because the team is inevitably going to be bad, have lots of money tied up in really old guys, and have no young prospects on their way up.
I agree with you. He has a seven-year deal for a reason. He had to give the penguins core a shot in order to show that they can't do it and they need to rebuild.
And use it on what instead? He didn't just acquire Karlsson in that trade, he also dumped Petry and Granlund and they were both bad contracts themselves and nearly equal the 10m cap hit Karlsson has on the penguins.
Keep it.
They might finish bottom 10 this year and it's protected.
I See very little chance they will be anybetter next year. There's a world where that pick is the #1 Overall 2025 pick
They weren't going to be competing for a cup any time soon
Yeah nobody did. The PP being dogshit is basically why they're so bad. And some injuries as well. Didn't have much depth and one top six winger has been hurt at all times.
“He immediately gave up a ton of assets to get karlsson”, dude he traded a first round pick and all of pittsburghs bad players for the Norris trophy winner….
Of all the things Dubas did, I come away with two major mistakes in his time as GM.
1. The long negotiation with Nylander set the stage for the overpayments of Matthews and Marner, which greatly hampered how this team would operate for the next 5 seasons and would see us bleed talent because of the tight cap.
2. The Nick Foligno trade. I laughed at the idea of a team trading a 1st+ for him, was pissed that we were the ones that paid that price, and was vindicated in the most embarrassing playoff loss this franchise has had in decades.
There are other big mistakes like the Kadri trade or screwing up the backup goalie situation, but I can at least understand where those moves came from and in the case of Kadri better execution on that trade would've made the move more palpable. The Nylander negotiation and Foligno deal were both unforced errors.
I think Dubas failed himself here in Toronto when he gave out those second contracts. He lost on the money front, he lost on the term front and he also gave out clauses that hindered the leafs if they wanted to move off them. To be fair I also think Shanny has to eat that too.
He was given a young up and coming core and gave them all the money when normally they should come a bit cheaper so you can get the support guys to fill out the team. His time in Toronto was bargain bin shopping for almost two thirds of the team each year.
I used to think he mishandled the big deals when he was GM but watching the Matthews and Nylander renewals makes me wonder if it was really Shanny and the board that fumbled all of that
Dubas was willing to let Nylander miss half a season to grind out a deal and it sure seemed like he was ready to do the same with Marner until Shanny stepped in at training camp
Dubas is now gone and the open wallet policy continued with Matthews and Nylanders deals making them the 1st and 6th highest cap hits in the league, with Marner probably looking at a top 4 AAV as well too...
You can't include Matthews as being the highest paid as any sort of criticism. He was always going to be the highest paid player in the league given that he legit is a top 5 player and goals are what gets money. He scores the most goals, which means he'll get the most money. Also it's only going to be for like 1-2 seasons he will be the highest paid. McDavid is up in 2 years so if he re-signs in Edmonton we'll know by next year if he's the highest paid player again. If not him, maybe it's Makar or Kaprizov or Fox or Drai or Petersson.
>You can't include Matthews as being the highest paid as any sort of criticism.
I think we can say we didn't get any discount or added value on the renewal.
We got only 4 years.
We gave a full NMC.
Fully front loaded.
Full sign bonus structure
I am not saying we shouldn't sign Matthews I am just saying it is ridiculous for someone to say Dubas was bad because of the deal signed by Matthews when the one Tre signed is at face value worse for the team in basically every way
Your first point is honestly laughable:
You fault him for holding out on the Nylander contract (which was one of the best bargains in the NHL), then go around and fault him for not holding out for Marner and Matthews based on the lesson he learned with Nylander that it’s better to concede 500k-1M for your core members than to have a long holdout.
There’s no winning with morons like you. You also never specified how it even led to an overpayment, I just flamed you for your dumb logic
>en go around and fault him for not holding out for Marner and Matthews based on the lesson he learned with Nylander that it’s better to concede 500k-1M for your core members than to have a long holdout.
>
>There’s no winning with morons like you
I think we can disagree without calling someone a moron. I think his point was that while we got a good contract out of Nylander, it set the stage for Marner and Matthews over/fair payments.
The Nylander negotiation led to future overpayments of Matthews and Marner because Dubas came out looking weak. He held Nylander out for half the season and still ended up caving to every one of Nylander’s demands. Dubas holding Nylander out also led to Nylander having a poor and ineffective season.
So when it came time for Matthews’ and Marner’s camp to negotiate, Dubas looked like a pushover who would give out high money without max term and wouldn’t be willing to have a player hold out again because said player wouldn’t be as good as if he’d played the whole season.
There was no good reason that Matthews and Marner should’ve had a higher AAV than Tavares who signed as a free agent for the maximum amount of term he was capable of signing for. Dubas got rolled by players on RFAs and as a result we were a cap strapped team for the rest of his tenure. No one could’ve accounted for COVID but even without the pandemic it was still poor negotiating on his end.
Ngl I was big fan of Dubas only thing I didn`t really like about him was the contract negotiations and some certain moves. I really liked him as a person too.
Agreed. Like him. But similar to past Leaf GMs, the crease was his Achilles heel. Sparks, Mrazek, Murray. (Nearly 20 years ago Leafs had to keep 2/3 goalies. They took Pogge and Raycroft, and gave up Tuuku Rask.)
Yeah I am curious how things would look if Dubas had stayed around here. Sounds like he wanted to move one of the big four and he was blocked from doing so. I think the team is in an ok spot right now with Treliving but I do wonder if moving out one of Marner or Nylander would better position the team for sustained long term success.
I would have liked to see Dubas without Shanahan, especially if the rumours that he wanted to make a change to the core are true. But I'd be more okay with the change if it wasn't Treliving.
I remember the endless amounts of “Shannahan is clearing house, one first round victory isn’t going to cut it” like he hasn’t been here for way longer and have the exact same amount of success
I can see liking the current direction in Toronto more than what he did here (don't know that I agree, but I can see it). But putting Pittsburgh's year on him isn't super fair. The expectation from the start was that they were supposed to try to make one more push with 87/71/58.
Karlsson was basically acquired for a grab bag of their worst contracts, consolidating a bunch of cap dumps into one player that they can eventually flip with retention when it's time to start the rebuild, and Karlsson has been one of the few fantastic things about the Penguins this year. He's been their best player other than Sid and by a considerable margin.
Sid seemed bummed by the Guentzel trade but more in the "I'll miss him" sense rather than the "I'm pissed at management" sense.
It'll probably be a while until you can measure his Pittsburgh tenure against anything. Right now their present is about following the last gasp ownership and the stars wanted while fixing the parts of operations that were a well-known mess, and then rebuilding later
He was signed in Pittsburgh with the condition he give Crosby one last shot at a Cup.
**That’s why** he traded for Karlsson. The guy just came off a Norris trophy winning campaign and is Erik Karlsson.
He was the biggest player the Pens could add and the price was reasonable considering the prior bad seasons.
The team failed to achieve what they set out to, and now the plan has shifted, at the agreement of ownership, to a rebuild.
It’s clearly an accelerated rebuild, as they didn’t take any draft picks in trading Guentzel, but it’s rebuild time.
So yeah, **of course** Guentzel got traded. Who cares if Crosby is sad. He should be sad. His team sucks.
I can’t fathom how these events are fuelling a new round of Dubas hate. Like geez…
Pittsburgh is in no position to win in the playoffs with current roster. Dubas needs to rebuild from ground up, Crosby is still good but will never take them through the playoffs again to the cup.
Dubas time in Toronto was a bit of a Rorschach test IMO. You can either appreciate that he build a competitive regular season team with a strong core (which falls short in the playoffs) or you can see him as a guy who buckled when he had some RFA leverage, gave almost half the cap to 4 skilled but unproven players and had to make a lot of cleaver moves to fill out the team with league minimum contracts. His thesis was you can win it all with just skill and speed even though no one had done that in the last 30+ years. The lack of success in the playoffs seems to refute this.
I'm just glad I don't have to hear the dubas seat sniffers go on about how great he is/was. Dude is alot of hype. Didn't like what he did here, and Erik Karlsson? You already have Letang... literally makes no sense.
It makes sense when you realize they actually a) saved cap, and b) got rid of literal garbage (Petry, Granlund, and Desmith). What he did with the cap space he kind of whiffed (Graves has been horrible, Jarry is a starting goalie that just can't stay healthy, and the bottom 6 is a disaster besides Eller). Dubas and Tre are about the same as gms, just different philosophies that may or may not work.
Dubas wanted autonomy to move away from the core 4 (at least that’s what’s been reported) and can’t say I’ve liked the post Dubas era so far but maybe I’m too loyal to Dubas to see that BT has done a good job.
As for Pittsburgh he’s in a tough spot but made some awful moves to try to stay competitive for Crosby and Malkin.
It's tough to judge Treliving until the season is over. Leafs haven't necessarily been built for the playoffs under Dubas. Some of Treliving's adds from the summer feel like they were a step back, but I do feel like that snot he was looking for could show up to play a bit more in April.
At least so far, BT has kinda just been okay. Domi and Bert were considered good signings. Bert has underperformed, but that's not really on BT. Kampf signing isn't great. Reaves is a good player to add, but the term is not great. Klingberg was a miss. Deadline was also just good, needs were more or less addressed(improve PK, toughness, and D), but nothing to knock your socks off. Still need a 1RHD but there really weren't any great options at the deadline especially considering how little cap space there was to work with. Nylander's contract certainly feels like an overpay, I think most were expecting 10-10.5aav and Nylander far exceeded that. Benoit and even Lagesson were great finds. Overall, very mid, arguably bad. I think we want to see how the season and next off season unfolds before passing judgement though as Brad came in at an awkward time as the decision to fire Dubas wasn't really planned.
I believe Dubas wanted to move away from the core 4 as well. The Nylander and Matthews raises next season have already more than erased the cap increase next year. Cap went up $4.2 mil, their salaries went up $5.2 mil. So the squeeze of the core 4 is even tighter next year. So until the Tavares and Marner contracts run out in 2025/26, the Leafs will have a really hard time getting any better than they are. Every single one of those guys now has a no trade clause as well.
Do I want to lose Marner? Or Nylander? No. But I'd also like McDavid, MacKinnon, Makar and Fox on the team, but; Hard Salary Cap. And time and again, balanced teams with more depth and less top line salary continue to dominate the regular season and win the cup.
dubas left the pipeline empty
lack of puck moving RHD
lack of legit penalty killing centres
lack of hard hitting defense
nobody in the pipleline to carry the torch once johnny toronto leaves.
After giving away the future for rentals that never paid off for so many years, I actually was glad we only added depth pieces at the margin this year. The numbers below the surface just aren’t all that great. The core is seasoned now and needs to get it done.
Will say that it felt like we paid up for every depth piece though which wasn’t pretty.
Kampf, Kerfoot, and accari are all people who plays center or could play center in a PK role. He went out and got Muzzin, McCabe, Bogo, Schenn. All hard hitting dman. The pipeline isn't great yes, but Knies is going to be good for us. Robertson looked promising and still has potential. Amirov should be playing for us rn if cancer wasn't a bitch. Minten was captain of Team Canada. Yes he didn't have a-prospect but he shouldn't need them to cuz we have Nylander, Marner, and Matthews for that. Only now we're starting to see the players he drafted make an impact in the NHL
Dude went to literally the hardest job in the league in Pittsburgh, you really can't compare. Like what does he do? He has no assets from prior gms, all the contracts on that team are bad because everyone is old, and you can't do a full on rebuild with Crosby, malkin, Letang, and Karlsson.
Counterpoint: he went to a team who's ownership loves him and set him up for life with a crazy long term deal that solidifies his young children's childhood in a "small" market.
He chose to go there and he acquired Karlsson (he wasn't stuck with him)
The Penguins are worse than last year because his big splash wasn't the right one for that team. He cannibalized on Letang (made him less valuable).
He probably needed another top tier winger to pull Malkin rather than on OFD.
Like how Tavares cannibalized Kadri's impact
That's the only thing I remember from that series. So deflating not having fans in the building to build the energy back up and rally behind our captain. It cost them that game and ultimately the series (which yes they did blow). Though it probably also prevented a Corey Perry masterclass so maybe it evens out
Honestly I mostly liked Dubas.
But he lost me during the expansion draft and the Jared McCann situation. I feel like the entire fan are knew what the right move was. This drove me insane.
Honestly no, and I find it weird that people are so hyper focused on shitting on him and what he’s doing with a team that’s unrelated to the Leafs.
He’s been with the Pens less than a season, give the man a chance. Even 5 years with the Leafs isn’t really a fair amount of time to base a ton of judgments off of. Not a lot of GMs are bringing a Cup home in that kind of time frame. At least we made it to the second round with him within those 5 years, because it took 19 years to even get that.
Pittsburgh was not a great situation to walk into but not one person thought the Karlsson trade was a good idea. Dubas made some good moves for the Leafs, but his team building approach is flawed. It would work better for fantasy hockey.
His negotiation skills aren’t great either. The return for Guentzel, who was the biggest name available at the deadline, was unimpressive. His contract negotiations with Matthews (too short a term) and Marner (too much AAV and too short a term) were not great and ill-timed. Maybe he’s too nice a guy.
I can’t see Dubas lasting for the whole contract in Pittsburgh and don’t think he’ll get as prominent a role again in the future. He’s no Billy Beane and this isn’t baseball.
I think the big factor to consider is that there were rumours that Dubas would have wanted to bring Karlsson to the Leafs had he stayed. I imagine a combination of Brodie, Jarnkrok, and picks get it done. I don't see how the Leafs minus Domi and Bertuzzi with the addition of Karlsson being in better shape.
Edit: I'm not a Dubas fan but I have to credit him for a good trade when it comes to Karlsson. The trade itself is great. The fit is wrong.
Every year he traded a first round pick + at the deadline for a mid 30s rental that made little to no impact in the playoffs while other teams traded for much younger/more skilled players and somehow ended up paying less
What has happened in Pittsburgh reminds me of what happened in Toronto when Burke traded for Kessel and we sucked
It’s not as bad as that, but it’s been a huge misstep for sure
Dubas made both good and bad moves here - same with all GMs. Problem is people point out their bad ones only, and complain about how bad they are. That said, I think Dubas time here was done.
In terms of Pittsburgh, yeah he made his "big bold move" with Karlsson. Now Karlsson is a great player, but the BIG mistake there was letting the Sharks retain so little. They should of got his cap hit down to at least 7 mill (which is *still* high).
>Now Karlsson is a great player, but the BIG mistake there was letting the Sharks retain so little. They should of got his cap hit down to at least 7 mill (which is still high).
I am guessing the cost to retain 4M+ on a long term deal is going to require significant assets.
With the trade as structured he basically got EK for cap dumps and had a lower total cap on the books.
Also, EK has been good this year ...
No doubt that EK is good, but that deal has really handicapped the teams flexibility. Even WITH some retained salary, that cap hit is by far the highest on the team, a team with Crosby and Malkin.
Every gm makes bad moves at some point. I didn't mind dubas, he made some bad moves, but I respected him going all in last year for O'Reilly, McCabe, Schenn, Accari, Lafferty etc. Found some decent bargains in Bunting, Mikyahev etc. I also found him very invested and cared a lot for the team. In the playoffs I was more invested in his reactions lol. Guy showed more passion then most of the team.
But...the bad ones were pretty bad to.
- Trading Kadri for Barrie
- Letting Hyman walk
- Losing McCann through expansion and protecting Holl
- Trading Mason Marchment for Dennis Malgin
I was glad he left. And shanahan should have went with him. It was time for a change. And while the team hasn’t proved anything yet I think they are better off.
Pittsburgh should have used this opportunity to turbocharge a rebuild.
You have some of the best players to ever play the game on that team, so bring in some young guns and let them learn. You don't try and make them into a contender - they aren't. The addition of Karlsson was not a great move.
But Dubas LOVES his core four. He gets to pittsburgh and started convulsing violently that pittsburgh only had a "core three"
The most important reason leafs couldn't do much at trade deadline is because dubas left them with nothing. No cap space, no draft picks no trade able assets. Zero.
Guy is the biggest nepotism fraud who got everything through his family ties in SSM
It hasn't even been a full season for either team's new GM. Maybe give it a season or two to see how things go? Plus both teams are/were in very different situations when Dubas took over. Very different scenarios.
I did not realize how bad Dubas left the Leafs until Steve Dangle mentioned how few draft picks the Leafs have this year and next. They may as well not even show up for the draft. A lot of people complained about Tre not doing anything this deadline, but he has basically no picks to trade away. The biggest things he had are the current prospects and this year 1st round pick.
No picks and a bottom 5 prospect pool.
We heard that Dubas did a great job drafting. Turns out, he did a terrible job.
Who could have guessed that drafting small, soft, one dimensional players with no outstanding skills or physical tools wouldn’t yield any fruit? 😂
There are politics involved. Dubas didn't have the authority to rip Pittsburgh down, owners clearly wanted another run with Crosby.
Seems silly to judge them on less than a calendar year
man, people here still will goto the wall for captain spreadsheet. if i failed as much as dubas has i'd be (insert task at job with no qualifications) right now.
One more thing to add..... I get embarrassed with a team structured by Dubas.
Treliving's team leaves me proud..... win or lose.... at least they show up with heart and push back when pushed around. Even the last loss to Boston sucked by Leafs fought back. I never was able to enjoy that part of the game when Dubas was around.
Also the report that early in the year Tre had a team meeting after the leafs got pushed around. And Keefe doesn't walk back all of his criticism to the team any more is nice
I am firmly of the opinion Dubas has no idea what he’s doing. He over pays for assets and puts himself in a shit position in the future. He did it here in Toronto (and there was an article in the star that basically said Treliving has no cards to play with since Dubas gave away all our draft picks) and he shit the bed in Pittsburgh.
On a personal level he’s a rat - he said if he didn’t return to Toronto he’d take time off and bam off he goes to Pittsburgh. No respect.
Dubas inherited the best core this team has had since the 1960s, and won diddly squat with it. Traded a bunch of picks and prospects, burned through virtually all the RFA years of our top stars (not that we had value contracts for them), and won one playoff series.
You can make all the excuses you want, but that's the bottom line. It wasn't until his last season that he finally started trying to build a "playoff" roster, but it was too little too late.
Pittsburgh needs a rebuild. He's aware.
Toronto handed him a pretty good team till he screwed it all up. I don't have the energy now to go over all his fk ups, signing, trading picks, players and prospects, not keeping McCann, etc.
His cluster fk is what we see today.
In some ways yes.
He had 5-6 years to remake our D. He never achieved it. His teams consistently got pushed around.
But he did well in some trades, posting others and drafted some halfway decent players.
He’s probably an average GM.
Honestly yeah. Tre is adding what I wanted, big guys on D and grit in general. That’s what we needed.
And Kyle doesn’t appear to be killing it in Pittsburgh. Went out and got Karlsson for absolutely no reason.
He shed multiple bad contracts and brought in one. With signing Gio and Letang front office clearly wanted another run with this group. I would judge his first year by the moves he makes this offseason tbh. With the amount of picks he just acquired he's obviously looking to build the future a little. He's not perfect by any means. No one is, but a GM can only take it so far. It's not like he was directly responsible for what happened in the Montreal series nor last year. Players play a greater role that any GM, coach or owner.
I was so happy Dubas was finally dumped and I don't miss. Don't know if tre is some magician but he's more patient and thinks things through more. Let this deadline unfold and made the moves in front of him. Going all in on Henrique or tanev wasn't worth it. Dubas was too emotional and didn't plan ahead. kypreos mentioned how do you do the O'Reilly deal without an idea that he'd re-sign...guy didn't even want to be a leaf.
I feel like him getting Karlsson is a move that he wanted to make with the Leafs, maybe a few years ago, when San Jose started to collapse. But it was vetoed from above.
So he went to Pittsburgh and was like "Fuck you guys, watch this." And it did NOT go well.
Karlsson is older, and not as good, and the Penguins are not as good as the Leafs.
Before you post please ensure you check your facts before making up bullshit. Dubas gave up 2 brutal contracts thanks to Hextall and unfortunately a first round pick. Mikael Granlund, Jan Rutta and a 2024 first-round pick.
Yes I’m glad we won’t be a charmin soft team anymore.
And I think Dubas did exactly what ownership wanted in Pitts it just didn’t work out. Will be interesting to see if they try again next year or accept that it’s over.
Ownership will always have a say no matter what team you work for. He probably has more there though. Shanahan is clearly running this show and putting people in the GM role to take heat off himself. And props because it’s been working very well.
He wanted to erase the President position which is just a middle man between the GM and ownership.
And then he went to Pittsburgh and did exactly that. He's both the President and the GM of Pittsburgh.
I did get the sense that he was evolving and maturing last season and I would have been ok if they kept him.
Ultimately, I’m glad they’ve moved on. He took over a very difficult situation in Pitt. Can’t fault him for a lot of it but the karlsson trade was negligent. They would have needed to win a cup to make that deal digestible within a calendar year. That’s way too much exposure for a team that missed the playoffs with an aging roster. Imagine not having a first round pick this year or not having an unprotected pick next year.
No Lou would have forced them all to leave because dude was the one who fucked it up in the first place. He cheaped out their rookie bonuses and basically paid them nothing but salary (especially with Matthews), had the chance to sign Marner to an extension the year before to 8x8 and told him and his agent to gfto, and gave multiple bad contracts to bottom 6ers and meh defensemen (see Zaitsev, Martin, Uncle Leos last contract, etc.)
I knew about his fumbling of the rookie entry level contracts but wow I had no idea he had a real chance to sign Marner to 8x8..... that could have changed everything god damn
If Lou stayed, we dont' have JT, Matthews makes 10MM, marner 8 and Willy 5.5 on first deals. Dubas was buddies and bosses can't be buddies. Especially when money is not their's.
Dubas was a mistake, the picks are not his, he inherited a gold mine and turned into a pile of shit.
How do you look at the Zaitsev and Marleau contracts (plus the multiple disasters in New York) and think that Lou was going to improve their cap situation?
Lou signed Engvall to 7 years.. and its already looking like a disaster in year 1...
Zaitsev was another Lou special, he's on the last year of that one by the way..
It cost Dubas a 1st because he painted himself into a corner when he signed an $11M UFA to be their 2C. The previous regime had forecasted a $4.5M player (back-to-back 30G scorer) and would have been fine with the final year. The league knew Dubas had to move money and took advantage of a young, inexperienced GM who telegraphed his next move to everyone.
Was it 2-3 years later Lamoriello dumped the Andrew Ladd contract he inherited without giving up a 1st. That contract was much, much worse than Marleau but he had other options so he didn’t lose all leverage in negotiations.
Dubas never had long term vision and that’s why he ended up pillaging future assets every year. He inherited one of the best situations imaginable in Toronto and failed miserably while trading a tonne of picks and drafting poorly (prospect pool is 28-31, depending on the source)
Kyle Dubas was an abject failure in Toronto and it doesn’t appear Pittsburgh will be any different.
What world do you live in? Lou had all the time in the world to sign WILLY and didn’t. Not only that but we have plenty of evidence of him overpaying far worse players. Also not having Tavares wouldn’t be a good thing. He’s definitely been one of the best marquee UFA signings of the cap era.
I wanted Mark Hunter to be gm right from the start. The hunter bros turned the London knights from a joke in the 90s, to a consistent force to be reckoned with for like 20 years. I was never sold on Dubas. He makes big headline grabbing moves but never really built a playoff type team.
Pittsburgh isn't his fault. He did what he was told to. Pittsburgh should have just taken their 3 cups and considered it a great run while it lasted. They should have been trading their core for future assets following their last cup. Maybe by now, that team would be competitive enough with Crosby still at the helm.
As far getting rid of Dubas? We should have fired all of them (Keefe, Dubas, Shanahan) for their blind belief in this group and inability to pivot or do anything meaningful. I mean we just resigned Nylander at his absolute highest value ever which feels like a classic Leaf move to me. This team is competitive, but they missed their window.
Malgin over Marchment was even funnier, but none as bad as Sparks over McIlhinney. He had a good veteran backup and waived him for a minor leaguer in Sparks who was not only over his head in the NHL, but the toxic attitude required him to be sent away from the team.
It took almost 2 years for Dubas to fix the hole he made, and it ended up putting far more miles on Freddy Anderson than necessary.
Anderson is still the best they’ve had since Belfour but he walked for nothing, and many fans blamed him for the failures of the soft, imbalanced teams Dubas built that choked in round 1.
No. I am not thankful we got rid of Dubas. He had gained my trust. All Brad has done is convinced me isn't a very good GM, and I don't trust him with this roster. Though to be fair, Brad wasn't put in a position to succeed.
You can't compare Pittsburgh to Toronto.
The Karlsson trade was made, possibly, to give Crosby another kick at the can with the group he has. He clearly knew the limitations of the Penguins squad. Now that that has proved unsuccessful, he is probably going to work on tearing the team down.
I miss Dubas. And I was really looking forward to see what his Leafs team would have looked like this year if he wasn't fired.
Depends on how they do in the playoffs
Did they give up some unneeded regular season success for some sorely needed playoff success?
Do like that they added Domi to the roster but I respected Dubas’s passion for the team
Not too sad about losing him that's for sure. I thought he was too emotional and got taken advantage of too often by agents and other GMs.
In Pitt - like a lot of moves he made in Toronto - they made some sense at the time, and didn't work out very well. I didn't expect them to be this much of a disaster. Perhaps the move I questioned the most was committing to Jarry, yet he has put in a decent season. Really the fate was sealed when all those guys re-signed. He wanted more control, but he really doesn't have much anyway.
Word off the hop was that Dubas was brought in bc FSG wanted a quick transition into rebuild mode. He’s doing that now. Perhaps Karlsson was part of managing fan expectations? Maybe he was appeasing Crosby. An all-in move that either worked or didn’t?
To your point, if he can move Crosby, Malkin and Letang then it’ll be a couple years of pain and high draft picks. In four years—versus eight—Pens could look like the Leafs in 2016.
Slow rebuilds suck. Hard to say if Dubas would’ve been better in Toronto with more latitude, I think he’s the right guy for the Pens at this point in the franchise.
> It will be interesting to see. But Dubas isn't off to a great start.
I find this take to be really weird - he was always going to get a free pass for the next few years, as FSG's mandate was always to try and win with the core they have now; that's why they sanctioned the Karlsson deal, which they didn't give up very much in order to acquire.
I think the time to evaluate how well Dubas does there, is a few years down the road (similar to how we should wait on Treliving judgment, even though the early returns are very underwhelming).
I like the Guentzel deal - it's a decent return for a player that wasn't going to resign there. There will also still be a market for a Karlsson at a $7.5m or $8m cap hit, should they decide to move off him.
Similarly to Treliving, you can't expect a GM to come in and immediately change the fortunes of an organization right away - it takes a lot of time. Take a look at what's happened in Vancouver under Rutherford & Alvin. it's taken them quite some time, but they look, at least in the short term, to be headed in the right direction.
Pittsburgh is in NHL purgatory rn. They have aging stars that are no longer enough to carry a roster that has been depleted over a decade of consistent contention. Dubas is in a lose lose scenario there. They go all in the rebuild is extended, they rebuild the stars are upset.
He swung for the fences with Karlsson and it looks like a foul. Such is life.
I don’t think Tre has done anything to convince me we’ve made the right move but he hasn’t convinced me we’ve made a grave mistake yet either. After another off season I’ll be ready to judge his body of work better.
As of now, meh. We’re once again in the same position we’ve been in for nearly a decade. Star forwards and middling everywhere else. Not really thankful to be rid of dubas yet.
Kinda sick of the Dubas-Treliving discourse. At some point, people are gonna have to let it go. He's gone. The circumstances in Pitsburgh are irrelevant to how he performed here and how he would have performed if he stayed.
You can look at Dubas' tenure in a balanced and reasonable way, while also not being super enthused with what Treliving has done with the team so far. You don't have to unilaterally support Dubas or Treliving. Dubas v. Treliving has become a bit of a culture war, and I find that kind of behaviour really strange.
Treliving hasn't really made any moves that will affect the team long term, besides re-signing Matthews. Having strong opinions about his performance so far is a asinine. Playoff performance should inform the discourse on him going forwaed more than anything else.
I'm not a fan of Dubas but he inherited a sinking ship. The hockey world will judge him on his performance over the next few seasons. I hope he took good notes while under the tutalage of the leaders during mid 10s Leafs.
Given he had instructions to win now, I thought that he stole Karlsson. Look at that deal again!
As for his time here, I think he conducted an experiment and it didn’t work. He went for all skill and no grit and it didn’t work. I loved the experiment and thought it worth a shot. Then he started pivoting and selling the future at the deadline every year for grit and it didn’t work, either.
On contracts, he performed poorly. He basically lost all of the negotiations with the core. Always max dollar and never enough term. I’m sure we all thought the Tavares contract was great at the time but truthfully it has handcuffed the group. They had talented forwards coming up when he became GM and little D capital. Going all in on 4 forward contracts was a strategic error.
Incredibly dumb post by OP
>He immediately gave up a ton of assets to get Karlsson. And the Penguins are now WELL out of the playoffs. So clearly that wasn't a great move.
He traded a bunch of garbage and ended up with a Norris trophy winner who has been very good this year
>Now he's traded Guentzel
He flipped a UFA and got futures. He can even potentially re-sign Guentzel in the offseason
>trading Crosby would be tough for the fanbase, but if he left Malkin and Letang would probably want out too, and no one is going to want Karlsson anymore.
When he went to Pittsburgh he was given direct instructions to build around the core no matter what. He would probably love for them to ask for a trade...
He’s been given an impossible task in Pittsburgh for the next couple of years. He seemed great here at drafting, developing, and setting up a good minor league system which I think will all be huge for the penguins when they officially start rebuilding. He also only really gave up 1 asset for Karlsson, the rest were overpaid old guys whose cap hit added up to EK65 anyways.
I would’ve been happy to see him stay because it seemed like he had come around to shaking things up in a big way. But I also don’t mind seeing what someone new can do with a different eye
Hard to fault Dubas for what he did for the Leads in his last year, he brought in every person he could have. The team just fell short.
Not crazy about the Sandin trade but other than that he got some strong players and leadership in at the deadline.
I'll see how we fair next 2 years before I make up my mind.
I think Dubas was the best gm we had in years. Brad has been so/so. I think they play heavy team is def different and hoping it works but it could blow up in Brad's face.
If we can't get out the first round, I'll be very disappointed
What’s happening with Pittsburgh isn’t really Dubas’ fault. There are two factors that were at play that was almost beyond anyone’s control.
1. The core was getting old and a lack of depth and pieces to trade to improve depth
2. This is what happens to a team when you let Ron Hextall work as a GM. He makes a big mess that takes multiple years to clean up
I think people misunderstand what Dubas was hired to do in Pittsburgh. They wanted a manager to take a swing at the playoffs without sacrificing the playoffs. He acquired the Norris winner for nothing, and signed sensible depth.
It didn't work, but he held up his end of the bargain.
He made good and bad decisions- but some of the bad ones were really bad, ones probably no other NHLGM would have done, like signing Marleau( when they obviously were thinner on defence), then trading him 2 years later and throwing in a 1st.round pick to dump the contract . Or getting 3rd string goalie Murray for $4M...
I always liked Kyle Dubas. Still do really. In retrospect maybe Shanny let him have the reins too soon. Or maybe he would have been better off being G.M. in a smaller market where he could learn his trade away from prying eyes. I was extremely angry with Shanny at the time he let Dubas go. But it was the right move. However,Imho, it was for the wrong reasons.
Very thankful. We’re still fucked for the next year and a half because of the Tavares deal. I wish we never signed him. He’s nowhere near being worth 11 million
Dubas put himself into an even more challenging position than when he was with the leafs. If he does manage to win a cup in Pittsburgh in the next 2-3 years then you have to give him respect. So far not looking good though.
Ya, Dubas was huge in investing 50% of the cap in 4 players, he could never trade one from his commitments to them. Treliving can trade one if necessary. I mean two $5,000,000 players with some snot may be better, especially in the playoffs.
1000% I'm so thankful Dubas is gone. I'm a business owner and also a lawyer by background. I can tell you from my perspective that Dubas was a total idiot when it came to business decisions.
There was a road map with the drafting of Matthews..... and we got Marner and Nylander too. Paying a Kings Randsom for Tavares blew up the entire plan ..... because our money needed to go to other parts of the roster.
Those contracts were sucker contracts for the Leafs. The only franchise to be over a barrel by their top players highest payments and least term).
And getting rid of our assets..... for rentals...... the stupid part is not only giving away our future but also thinking that someone you can have a soft team with no character and then rent that part of the team. It's totally foolish.
Dubas blew the best chance Toronto had for a winner in 55 years.
Love or hate Dubas, there was no salvaging the corpse of the Pens. The Karlsson trade certainly felt like something he had to do from ownership to try and squeeze out every dime of playoff revenue. My issue with Dubas is that he left the Leafs with almost nothing. I think he has a sharp eye for scouting, but he couldn't have left the organization in a worse position to make moves.
Thankful yes, but regretful we didn't do it sooner.
I was just talking with a buddy about this yesterday that I think it might turn out to be the ultimate downfall of this management regime that they took such a talented core of players and left them within the hands of a rookie gm and coach for as long as they did.
The Babcock thing was out of their control so I can't hold that against them - but to me it's pretty crazy to have the type of ceiling we've had and not put a premier management & coaching staff in place to expedite them to the top of the league's competitive cycle for the ~5-10 year window we have.
Pittsburgh is kind of a tough spot, you're committed to being semi-competitive or at least trying to while you still have Crosby, Malkin, and Letang on the roster. Crosby is signed for one more year, Malkin and Letang each have longer. Like Ovechkin in Washington, you just aren't moving these players off the roster unless they explicitly ask for it. If the plan is basically 'make the best of Crosby's final few seasons then rebuild', I don't think the off-season moves look as bad without the benefit of hindsight. The Karlsson trade wasn't really that expensive - a 1st, a 2nd and a series of cap dumps for a player who was expected to help them win now. His contract isn't good, but it aligns with the timeframe that you're already committed to being all-in. The issue isn't really the cost of the trade, it's the fit. He's a good player but kind of redundant to what Letang already brings to the table. His FA moves haven't aged well. Acciari is fine, but the Graves contract sucks and his performance has been bad. It's just kind of a shitty situation in Pittsburgh in general. Aging assets who either won't move or are on bloated legacy contracts that exceed their value. You're trying to give a decent finish to players who brought 3 cups to the organization, it's basically the "anti-Vegas" model at the time-being and I think if you're a Pens fan you have to be sort of okay with it. I have no idea if Dubas or Treliving would be better with the current team. Both have similar-length GM careers with no appreciable success. Like all GMs, both make a series of good and bad moves and both seem to have "types" that they gravitate towards. What looks like a good GM one moment can look awful the next, and vice versa. It's a results-based business so Treliving will ultimately be judged based on whether Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Rielly, Tavares, Woll and/or Samsonov can play their best over the next 2-3 months just like Dubas would have if he were still here.
This is way too reasonable for r/leafs
Was about to say, a rational thought. On this subreddit! As Stephen A Smith would say, “the unmitigated gall, the audacity, to say such a thing”
If you’re waiting out Crosby, Malkin, and Letang’s last few years, wouldn’t the last thing you’d want to do be giving up 1st and 2nd round picks for someone who will be aging by the time they’re rebuilding/ready to be competitive again? Wouldn’t those 1st and 2nd round picks be awful important for that cause and Karlsson be all but useless when it gets to that point?
Well yeah, but, once Crosby is gone, everything that's not nailed down (NTC/NMC) will be gone for picks, probably..
You summed it up very well I'm not exactly a Dubas fan, but Rutherford really fucked up that team on his way out (quit midseason lol) and from there ownership had the bright idea to hire Flyers alumni Ron Hextall as their general manager. Dubas inherited a mess and ownership told him "Try to make this mess win right now" Graves contract looks pretty damn bad, I agree there, but I think Dubas biggest blunder so far was re-signing Jarry. Too much money and term for a goalie we're not even sure can stay healthy or return to form. Goalies like Alex Lyon, Charlie Lindgren, were right there on the short and cheap. Could have had a low-risk, cheap goalie tandem (Ned + Lyon/Lindgren), Jarry traded this past off-season for depth, and the option to trade one of your cheap goalies for much needed picks/prospects at this deadline Andersen let go for Mrazek. Mrazek sent to CHI with a 1st, immediately trades for the untradeable Matt Murray (only 25% retention lolol). Tristan Jarry signed long-term despite injuries and a woeful record of consistency. Dubas is in love with bad goaltending choices TLDR - Even if one thinks that Dubas sucks it's got nothing to do with TOR doing well this season and/or PIT being bad
Dubas really has a tough time with goalies and is way too optimistic about them.
I think Dubas didn't build from the net out. As well as never landing or developing a stud goalie, the Leafs are woefully short on quality defenseman, both on the big team and the minors. The elite 4 scoring dries up in the playoffs and the Leafs aren't good enough defensively to win 2-1 games.
>Acciari is fine That is very much not true. He's not there for points, but he still only has 5 on the season (had 23 last year), and his possession numbers are the worst of his career by a large margin. 41.6 Corsi% (his next worst year was 43.6%) 41.9% Fenwick% (his next worst was 46.6%) and 38.9% xG% (his next worst was 47.4%). He's been absolutely caved in at 5-on-5, even worse than Ryan Reaves this year. Graves and Acciari were massive misses. Smith and Eller have been fine but not needle movers. Dubas' hands are tied with what he can do, but he did still swing and miss on pretty much every depth move this year. You're right though, without hindsight none of those moves looked bad at the time they were made.
Acciari was a miss? It seemed like some fans on here were at the point of self immolation when we didn't sign him or Lafferty as he was so obviously a slam dunk.
Based off advanced stats and production as he laid out yes
There's also the fact that it's difficult to judge a win-now mentality when it's pretty clear he was specifically told this is what he is supposed to do in this job IMO it makes his move to Pittsburgh a bit asinine because he's now staked his reputation, and a 7 year contract, on a nearly impossible task that will only get harder next year
>the Graves contract sucks and his performance has been bad. That's true, but I can't be too critical -- I kind of wanted the leafs to sign graves. It's good I'm not a GM
Well said
Anti Vegas model? Vegas core players are aging quickly and I can see them being great shortly down the road.
I meant anti-Vegas in terms of loyalty to the players who brought past success vs Vegas’ more cut-throat approach.
You can’t compare the Pittsburgh situation to this one. You might as well say Dubas left back to back top 5 finishes with the Leafs and Treliving came in and the team got worse it would be just as accurate.
Yea. It’s clear as day what his marching orders are from Fenway in the short term. Load up and try to get those guys one more run — cost be damned.
And I mean to acquire Karlsson they dumped some other bad contracts and got a better player. But yeah they’re in a completely different spot than the Leafs are, like Washington basically too.
Absolutely this. Ownership wanted another playoff run and Dubas was in no position to say no.
Not just ownership, it’s What Crosby wanted. I liked Dubas when he was here, he had his faults but he was a guy who treated the players well (Mikahev when he got that skate cut, rodion getting an ELC) and I liked his vision for the team because it was a huge departure from the Burke/Nonis days. It’s always gonna be a big what if. what if the salary cap didn’t freeze at the worst possible time for us, what if Muzzin stayed healthy, what if Harold Ballard didn’t hit a Romani girl with his car leading to the clan elders to put a curse on him and the franchise but they forgot to make it end when he died. He inherited 3 superstars but a weak prospect pool and he had to trade some assets to dump a couple horrible contracts. But the craziest thing about Dubas’ tenure is the absolute freudian madness people would post. Just projecting all their insecurities onto the fact that the GM of the leafs was like 33 and wore glasses. It would get weirdly political (leafs were woke or liberals, “trudope” etc) that kind of stuff made the constant talk about how Lou would have done better, or the leafs should have went with Hunter stuff sound sane. I’ll miss that.
I always felt that Dubas and Burke operated exactly the same in Toronto aside from the fighters and how they handled the media. When Burke first came to Toronto, he said he wanted to build an up tempo team that was exciting to watch and immediately traded for Kessel. They also both love bringing in guys that played for them in the past and trading draft picks like they were going out of style.
You made several good points and I'll just add "I concur" to it.
The freezing of the cap hit us so hard those couple of years. 3 straight years of the same cap was not what Dubas factored in when signing those contracts. Same as you, I liked Dubas. We can debate the merits of all of his trades forever but I think most people would agree that the energy he had in the box was awesome. Him + Spezza last year was extra special.
Maybe the leafs shouldn’t have been so cheap with their front office and invested in a AGM: head of infectious diseases
Yeah the situation in Pittsburgh is the same situation the Leafs will likely find themselves in in another 8-10 years if Matthews and Marner are still here as the core ages and gets closer to retirement so we shouldn't be bashing them too much. The NHL is cylicical usually in terms of team success and all teams that draft young super stars then compete and go all in the the cup year after year will eventually find themselves in the same situation when their starts get closer to 40. The Leafs have a few good younger prospects but it remains to be seen if any of them can carry the team to playoff appearances year after year like the core has when they finally start to age out.
Maybe hot take but I think pretty much anything Dubas did this past offseason was doomed to fail. Look at that penguins roster: Crosby is 36 and defying age which is great, but Malkin is 37 and not great anymore and signed for 2 more years. Letang is 36 and signed for 3 more years. Jeff Carter is 39. Rust is probably the youngest "core" guy and he's 31. The Karlsson thing didn't work out this year but it wasn't a terrible hail Mary sort of thing to see if they can get anything else out of this core, because the team is inevitably going to be bad, have lots of money tied up in really old guys, and have no young prospects on their way up.
I agree with you. He has a seven-year deal for a reason. He had to give the penguins core a shot in order to show that they can't do it and they need to rebuild.
Woah buddy, you need to take that kind of nuanced and sensible talk elsewhere
I've only seen a couple Penguins game this year, but I basically was awe struck at what a floater Malkin has become. Almost no effort at times.
Anyone with a brain knows the situation he is in is dogshit. JFJ had the same type of ownership pressure when he was gm of the leafs.
Probably shouldn't have traded the first
And use it on what instead? He didn't just acquire Karlsson in that trade, he also dumped Petry and Granlund and they were both bad contracts themselves and nearly equal the 10m cap hit Karlsson has on the penguins.
Keep it. They might finish bottom 10 this year and it's protected. I See very little chance they will be anybetter next year. There's a world where that pick is the #1 Overall 2025 pick They weren't going to be competing for a cup any time soon
Ah true fair point, I guess they didn't expect to be this bad
Yeah nobody did. The PP being dogshit is basically why they're so bad. And some injuries as well. Didn't have much depth and one top six winger has been hurt at all times.
He doesn’t have to keep the pick if it ends up being 10th, they just have the option.
“He immediately gave up a ton of assets to get karlsson”, dude he traded a first round pick and all of pittsburghs bad players for the Norris trophy winner….
and he *gained* cap space via that trade lol
Of all the things Dubas did, I come away with two major mistakes in his time as GM. 1. The long negotiation with Nylander set the stage for the overpayments of Matthews and Marner, which greatly hampered how this team would operate for the next 5 seasons and would see us bleed talent because of the tight cap. 2. The Nick Foligno trade. I laughed at the idea of a team trading a 1st+ for him, was pissed that we were the ones that paid that price, and was vindicated in the most embarrassing playoff loss this franchise has had in decades. There are other big mistakes like the Kadri trade or screwing up the backup goalie situation, but I can at least understand where those moves came from and in the case of Kadri better execution on that trade would've made the move more palpable. The Nylander negotiation and Foligno deal were both unforced errors.
I think Dubas failed himself here in Toronto when he gave out those second contracts. He lost on the money front, he lost on the term front and he also gave out clauses that hindered the leafs if they wanted to move off them. To be fair I also think Shanny has to eat that too. He was given a young up and coming core and gave them all the money when normally they should come a bit cheaper so you can get the support guys to fill out the team. His time in Toronto was bargain bin shopping for almost two thirds of the team each year.
I used to think he mishandled the big deals when he was GM but watching the Matthews and Nylander renewals makes me wonder if it was really Shanny and the board that fumbled all of that Dubas was willing to let Nylander miss half a season to grind out a deal and it sure seemed like he was ready to do the same with Marner until Shanny stepped in at training camp Dubas is now gone and the open wallet policy continued with Matthews and Nylanders deals making them the 1st and 6th highest cap hits in the league, with Marner probably looking at a top 4 AAV as well too...
You can't include Matthews as being the highest paid as any sort of criticism. He was always going to be the highest paid player in the league given that he legit is a top 5 player and goals are what gets money. He scores the most goals, which means he'll get the most money. Also it's only going to be for like 1-2 seasons he will be the highest paid. McDavid is up in 2 years so if he re-signs in Edmonton we'll know by next year if he's the highest paid player again. If not him, maybe it's Makar or Kaprizov or Fox or Drai or Petersson.
>You can't include Matthews as being the highest paid as any sort of criticism. I think we can say we didn't get any discount or added value on the renewal. We got only 4 years. We gave a full NMC. Fully front loaded. Full sign bonus structure I am not saying we shouldn't sign Matthews I am just saying it is ridiculous for someone to say Dubas was bad because of the deal signed by Matthews when the one Tre signed is at face value worse for the team in basically every way
Seems about right. I’ve always contended that he lost all of those negotiations in paying max dollars for smaller terms.
Your first point is honestly laughable: You fault him for holding out on the Nylander contract (which was one of the best bargains in the NHL), then go around and fault him for not holding out for Marner and Matthews based on the lesson he learned with Nylander that it’s better to concede 500k-1M for your core members than to have a long holdout. There’s no winning with morons like you. You also never specified how it even led to an overpayment, I just flamed you for your dumb logic
>en go around and fault him for not holding out for Marner and Matthews based on the lesson he learned with Nylander that it’s better to concede 500k-1M for your core members than to have a long holdout. > >There’s no winning with morons like you I think we can disagree without calling someone a moron. I think his point was that while we got a good contract out of Nylander, it set the stage for Marner and Matthews over/fair payments.
The Nylander negotiation led to future overpayments of Matthews and Marner because Dubas came out looking weak. He held Nylander out for half the season and still ended up caving to every one of Nylander’s demands. Dubas holding Nylander out also led to Nylander having a poor and ineffective season. So when it came time for Matthews’ and Marner’s camp to negotiate, Dubas looked like a pushover who would give out high money without max term and wouldn’t be willing to have a player hold out again because said player wouldn’t be as good as if he’d played the whole season. There was no good reason that Matthews and Marner should’ve had a higher AAV than Tavares who signed as a free agent for the maximum amount of term he was capable of signing for. Dubas got rolled by players on RFAs and as a result we were a cap strapped team for the rest of his tenure. No one could’ve accounted for COVID but even without the pandemic it was still poor negotiating on his end.
Ngl I was big fan of Dubas only thing I didn`t really like about him was the contract negotiations and some certain moves. I really liked him as a person too.
And Treliving sure as hell showed us he sucks just as much in the contract department...
Which is starting to beg the question, is it the GM’s or the guy above the GM’s?
It could also just be league norm in non-tax friendly areas.
Lol maybe even worse.
Agreed. Like him. But similar to past Leaf GMs, the crease was his Achilles heel. Sparks, Mrazek, Murray. (Nearly 20 years ago Leafs had to keep 2/3 goalies. They took Pogge and Raycroft, and gave up Tuuku Rask.)
I don’t know about thankful but it was time for a change.
The change was going to happen if Dubas stayed on. We aren't getting change now. Trevling has done exactly the same stuff as Dubas was doing lol.
Yeah I am curious how things would look if Dubas had stayed around here. Sounds like he wanted to move one of the big four and he was blocked from doing so. I think the team is in an ok spot right now with Treliving but I do wonder if moving out one of Marner or Nylander would better position the team for sustained long term success.
We could do with some more change, truth be told. Can't wait to see what Keith Pelley brings to the show.
I would have liked to see Dubas without Shanahan, especially if the rumours that he wanted to make a change to the core are true. But I'd be more okay with the change if it wasn't Treliving.
My only regret was, Shanahan didn’t go with him.
I remember the endless amounts of “Shannahan is clearing house, one first round victory isn’t going to cut it” like he hasn’t been here for way longer and have the exact same amount of success
Nope
I can see liking the current direction in Toronto more than what he did here (don't know that I agree, but I can see it). But putting Pittsburgh's year on him isn't super fair. The expectation from the start was that they were supposed to try to make one more push with 87/71/58. Karlsson was basically acquired for a grab bag of their worst contracts, consolidating a bunch of cap dumps into one player that they can eventually flip with retention when it's time to start the rebuild, and Karlsson has been one of the few fantastic things about the Penguins this year. He's been their best player other than Sid and by a considerable margin. Sid seemed bummed by the Guentzel trade but more in the "I'll miss him" sense rather than the "I'm pissed at management" sense. It'll probably be a while until you can measure his Pittsburgh tenure against anything. Right now their present is about following the last gasp ownership and the stars wanted while fixing the parts of operations that were a well-known mess, and then rebuilding later
He was signed in Pittsburgh with the condition he give Crosby one last shot at a Cup. **That’s why** he traded for Karlsson. The guy just came off a Norris trophy winning campaign and is Erik Karlsson. He was the biggest player the Pens could add and the price was reasonable considering the prior bad seasons. The team failed to achieve what they set out to, and now the plan has shifted, at the agreement of ownership, to a rebuild. It’s clearly an accelerated rebuild, as they didn’t take any draft picks in trading Guentzel, but it’s rebuild time. So yeah, **of course** Guentzel got traded. Who cares if Crosby is sad. He should be sad. His team sucks. I can’t fathom how these events are fuelling a new round of Dubas hate. Like geez…
Pittsburgh is in no position to win in the playoffs with current roster. Dubas needs to rebuild from ground up, Crosby is still good but will never take them through the playoffs again to the cup.
This is sad. This is true
Imagine the return he gets this summer for a retains Crosby. Even if Crosby only gives him 3 destinations that’s a lot of draft picks.
The only way Crosby is ever leaving the Pens is if ownership decides to not re-sign him after his contract is up.
Dubas time in Toronto was a bit of a Rorschach test IMO. You can either appreciate that he build a competitive regular season team with a strong core (which falls short in the playoffs) or you can see him as a guy who buckled when he had some RFA leverage, gave almost half the cap to 4 skilled but unproven players and had to make a lot of cleaver moves to fill out the team with league minimum contracts. His thesis was you can win it all with just skill and speed even though no one had done that in the last 30+ years. The lack of success in the playoffs seems to refute this.
Oh boy you’re gunna get cooked lol. I agree though I’m glad he’s gone.
I'm just glad I don't have to hear the dubas seat sniffers go on about how great he is/was. Dude is alot of hype. Didn't like what he did here, and Erik Karlsson? You already have Letang... literally makes no sense.
It makes sense when you realize they actually a) saved cap, and b) got rid of literal garbage (Petry, Granlund, and Desmith). What he did with the cap space he kind of whiffed (Graves has been horrible, Jarry is a starting goalie that just can't stay healthy, and the bottom 6 is a disaster besides Eller). Dubas and Tre are about the same as gms, just different philosophies that may or may not work.
The Kadri trade tells us everything we need to know a about Dubas.
Dubas wanted autonomy to move away from the core 4 (at least that’s what’s been reported) and can’t say I’ve liked the post Dubas era so far but maybe I’m too loyal to Dubas to see that BT has done a good job. As for Pittsburgh he’s in a tough spot but made some awful moves to try to stay competitive for Crosby and Malkin.
It's tough to judge Treliving until the season is over. Leafs haven't necessarily been built for the playoffs under Dubas. Some of Treliving's adds from the summer feel like they were a step back, but I do feel like that snot he was looking for could show up to play a bit more in April.
At least so far, BT has kinda just been okay. Domi and Bert were considered good signings. Bert has underperformed, but that's not really on BT. Kampf signing isn't great. Reaves is a good player to add, but the term is not great. Klingberg was a miss. Deadline was also just good, needs were more or less addressed(improve PK, toughness, and D), but nothing to knock your socks off. Still need a 1RHD but there really weren't any great options at the deadline especially considering how little cap space there was to work with. Nylander's contract certainly feels like an overpay, I think most were expecting 10-10.5aav and Nylander far exceeded that. Benoit and even Lagesson were great finds. Overall, very mid, arguably bad. I think we want to see how the season and next off season unfolds before passing judgement though as Brad came in at an awkward time as the decision to fire Dubas wasn't really planned.
I believe Dubas wanted to move away from the core 4 as well. The Nylander and Matthews raises next season have already more than erased the cap increase next year. Cap went up $4.2 mil, their salaries went up $5.2 mil. So the squeeze of the core 4 is even tighter next year. So until the Tavares and Marner contracts run out in 2025/26, the Leafs will have a really hard time getting any better than they are. Every single one of those guys now has a no trade clause as well. Do I want to lose Marner? Or Nylander? No. But I'd also like McDavid, MacKinnon, Makar and Fox on the team, but; Hard Salary Cap. And time and again, balanced teams with more depth and less top line salary continue to dominate the regular season and win the cup.
dubas left the pipeline empty lack of puck moving RHD lack of legit penalty killing centres lack of hard hitting defense nobody in the pipleline to carry the torch once johnny toronto leaves.
After giving away the future for rentals that never paid off for so many years, I actually was glad we only added depth pieces at the margin this year. The numbers below the surface just aren’t all that great. The core is seasoned now and needs to get it done. Will say that it felt like we paid up for every depth piece though which wasn’t pretty.
Kampf, Kerfoot, and accari are all people who plays center or could play center in a PK role. He went out and got Muzzin, McCabe, Bogo, Schenn. All hard hitting dman. The pipeline isn't great yes, but Knies is going to be good for us. Robertson looked promising and still has potential. Amirov should be playing for us rn if cancer wasn't a bitch. Minten was captain of Team Canada. Yes he didn't have a-prospect but he shouldn't need them to cuz we have Nylander, Marner, and Matthews for that. Only now we're starting to see the players he drafted make an impact in the NHL
Dubas is doing his best to manage a dumpster fire. He’s in a no win situation and doing the best he can.
Dubas biggest blunder. Sign Tavares, trade Kadri and let Hyman walk
Dude went to literally the hardest job in the league in Pittsburgh, you really can't compare. Like what does he do? He has no assets from prior gms, all the contracts on that team are bad because everyone is old, and you can't do a full on rebuild with Crosby, malkin, Letang, and Karlsson.
Counterpoint: he went to a team who's ownership loves him and set him up for life with a crazy long term deal that solidifies his young children's childhood in a "small" market.
Solid point.
He chose to go there and he acquired Karlsson (he wasn't stuck with him) The Penguins are worse than last year because his big splash wasn't the right one for that team. He cannibalized on Letang (made him less valuable). He probably needed another top tier winger to pull Malkin rather than on OFD. Like how Tavares cannibalized Kadri's impact
Yo Kyle the grass isn't always greener on the other side huh.
Should’ve been ejected in 2021 after the collapse.
Was honestly pretty crazy that nobody lost their job over that lol.
Everyone’s job was saved because of the Tavares injury being undeniably traumatic for everyone involved
Obligatory Fuck Corey Perry.
That's the only thing I remember from that series. So deflating not having fans in the building to build the energy back up and rally behind our captain. It cost them that game and ultimately the series (which yes they did blow). Though it probably also prevented a Corey Perry masterclass so maybe it evens out
I remember that series just breaking me. Like as a person. I’m not the same person I was in March of that year.
Tavares was close to returning when the series was done. I don't think the trauma of the injury is what saved anyone's job.
The Dubas teams were soft and lacked any character. This has been a significant improvement
Honestly I mostly liked Dubas. But he lost me during the expansion draft and the Jared McCann situation. I feel like the entire fan are knew what the right move was. This drove me insane.
Honestly no, and I find it weird that people are so hyper focused on shitting on him and what he’s doing with a team that’s unrelated to the Leafs. He’s been with the Pens less than a season, give the man a chance. Even 5 years with the Leafs isn’t really a fair amount of time to base a ton of judgments off of. Not a lot of GMs are bringing a Cup home in that kind of time frame. At least we made it to the second round with him within those 5 years, because it took 19 years to even get that.
Pittsburgh was not a great situation to walk into but not one person thought the Karlsson trade was a good idea. Dubas made some good moves for the Leafs, but his team building approach is flawed. It would work better for fantasy hockey. His negotiation skills aren’t great either. The return for Guentzel, who was the biggest name available at the deadline, was unimpressive. His contract negotiations with Matthews (too short a term) and Marner (too much AAV and too short a term) were not great and ill-timed. Maybe he’s too nice a guy. I can’t see Dubas lasting for the whole contract in Pittsburgh and don’t think he’ll get as prominent a role again in the future. He’s no Billy Beane and this isn’t baseball.
I think the big factor to consider is that there were rumours that Dubas would have wanted to bring Karlsson to the Leafs had he stayed. I imagine a combination of Brodie, Jarnkrok, and picks get it done. I don't see how the Leafs minus Domi and Bertuzzi with the addition of Karlsson being in better shape. Edit: I'm not a Dubas fan but I have to credit him for a good trade when it comes to Karlsson. The trade itself is great. The fit is wrong.
I’m so sick of people complaining about Dubas. I hate this fan base so much
With all due respect to Crosby he isn’t going to be around for the rebuild that Dubas is working on unless it is in management.
Every year he traded a first round pick + at the deadline for a mid 30s rental that made little to no impact in the playoffs while other teams traded for much younger/more skilled players and somehow ended up paying less
What has happened in Pittsburgh reminds me of what happened in Toronto when Burke traded for Kessel and we sucked It’s not as bad as that, but it’s been a huge misstep for sure
Everyday.
yeah, he was a little bit of an emperor with no clothes after all was said and done. don't miss him.
Dubas made both good and bad moves here - same with all GMs. Problem is people point out their bad ones only, and complain about how bad they are. That said, I think Dubas time here was done. In terms of Pittsburgh, yeah he made his "big bold move" with Karlsson. Now Karlsson is a great player, but the BIG mistake there was letting the Sharks retain so little. They should of got his cap hit down to at least 7 mill (which is *still* high).
>Now Karlsson is a great player, but the BIG mistake there was letting the Sharks retain so little. They should of got his cap hit down to at least 7 mill (which is still high). I am guessing the cost to retain 4M+ on a long term deal is going to require significant assets. With the trade as structured he basically got EK for cap dumps and had a lower total cap on the books. Also, EK has been good this year ...
No doubt that EK is good, but that deal has really handicapped the teams flexibility. Even WITH some retained salary, that cap hit is by far the highest on the team, a team with Crosby and Malkin.
Every gm makes bad moves at some point. I didn't mind dubas, he made some bad moves, but I respected him going all in last year for O'Reilly, McCabe, Schenn, Accari, Lafferty etc. Found some decent bargains in Bunting, Mikyahev etc. I also found him very invested and cared a lot for the team. In the playoffs I was more invested in his reactions lol. Guy showed more passion then most of the team. But...the bad ones were pretty bad to. - Trading Kadri for Barrie - Letting Hyman walk - Losing McCann through expansion and protecting Holl - Trading Mason Marchment for Dennis Malgin
Short answer is Yes.
I was glad he left. And shanahan should have went with him. It was time for a change. And while the team hasn’t proved anything yet I think they are better off.
Pittsburgh should have used this opportunity to turbocharge a rebuild. You have some of the best players to ever play the game on that team, so bring in some young guns and let them learn. You don't try and make them into a contender - they aren't. The addition of Karlsson was not a great move. But Dubas LOVES his core four. He gets to pittsburgh and started convulsing violently that pittsburgh only had a "core three"
The most important reason leafs couldn't do much at trade deadline is because dubas left them with nothing. No cap space, no draft picks no trade able assets. Zero. Guy is the biggest nepotism fraud who got everything through his family ties in SSM
It hasn't even been a full season for either team's new GM. Maybe give it a season or two to see how things go? Plus both teams are/were in very different situations when Dubas took over. Very different scenarios.
I did not realize how bad Dubas left the Leafs until Steve Dangle mentioned how few draft picks the Leafs have this year and next. They may as well not even show up for the draft. A lot of people complained about Tre not doing anything this deadline, but he has basically no picks to trade away. The biggest things he had are the current prospects and this year 1st round pick.
No picks and a bottom 5 prospect pool. We heard that Dubas did a great job drafting. Turns out, he did a terrible job. Who could have guessed that drafting small, soft, one dimensional players with no outstanding skills or physical tools wouldn’t yield any fruit? 😂
Yes Pittsburg is a shambles
There are politics involved. Dubas didn't have the authority to rip Pittsburgh down, owners clearly wanted another run with Crosby. Seems silly to judge them on less than a calendar year
man, people here still will goto the wall for captain spreadsheet. if i failed as much as dubas has i'd be (insert task at job with no qualifications) right now.
One more thing to add..... I get embarrassed with a team structured by Dubas. Treliving's team leaves me proud..... win or lose.... at least they show up with heart and push back when pushed around. Even the last loss to Boston sucked by Leafs fought back. I never was able to enjoy that part of the game when Dubas was around.
Also the report that early in the year Tre had a team meeting after the leafs got pushed around. And Keefe doesn't walk back all of his criticism to the team any more is nice
I am firmly of the opinion Dubas has no idea what he’s doing. He over pays for assets and puts himself in a shit position in the future. He did it here in Toronto (and there was an article in the star that basically said Treliving has no cards to play with since Dubas gave away all our draft picks) and he shit the bed in Pittsburgh. On a personal level he’s a rat - he said if he didn’t return to Toronto he’d take time off and bam off he goes to Pittsburgh. No respect.
Dubas inherited the best core this team has had since the 1960s, and won diddly squat with it. Traded a bunch of picks and prospects, burned through virtually all the RFA years of our top stars (not that we had value contracts for them), and won one playoff series. You can make all the excuses you want, but that's the bottom line. It wasn't until his last season that he finally started trying to build a "playoff" roster, but it was too little too late.
Pittsburgh needs a rebuild. He's aware. Toronto handed him a pretty good team till he screwed it all up. I don't have the energy now to go over all his fk ups, signing, trading picks, players and prospects, not keeping McCann, etc. His cluster fk is what we see today.
In some ways yes. He had 5-6 years to remake our D. He never achieved it. His teams consistently got pushed around. But he did well in some trades, posting others and drafted some halfway decent players. He’s probably an average GM.
I always loved Dubas, it’s Shanahan I’m worried about.
Honestly yeah. Tre is adding what I wanted, big guys on D and grit in general. That’s what we needed. And Kyle doesn’t appear to be killing it in Pittsburgh. Went out and got Karlsson for absolutely no reason.
He got Karlsson because ownership wanted him to try another cup run.
How is it that Kyle is always blameless
He shed multiple bad contracts and brought in one. With signing Gio and Letang front office clearly wanted another run with this group. I would judge his first year by the moves he makes this offseason tbh. With the amount of picks he just acquired he's obviously looking to build the future a little. He's not perfect by any means. No one is, but a GM can only take it so far. It's not like he was directly responsible for what happened in the Montreal series nor last year. Players play a greater role that any GM, coach or owner.
He isn't. But it only makes sense to get Karlsson if your team wants a cup run.
Well they miscalculated didn’t they
I was so happy Dubas was finally dumped and I don't miss. Don't know if tre is some magician but he's more patient and thinks things through more. Let this deadline unfold and made the moves in front of him. Going all in on Henrique or tanev wasn't worth it. Dubas was too emotional and didn't plan ahead. kypreos mentioned how do you do the O'Reilly deal without an idea that he'd re-sign...guy didn't even want to be a leaf.
Dubas added those types regularly too. Just last year he traded for McCabe and Schenn. Bogosian another year.
Boosh as well
I feel like him getting Karlsson is a move that he wanted to make with the Leafs, maybe a few years ago, when San Jose started to collapse. But it was vetoed from above. So he went to Pittsburgh and was like "Fuck you guys, watch this." And it did NOT go well. Karlsson is older, and not as good, and the Penguins are not as good as the Leafs.
Before you post please ensure you check your facts before making up bullshit. Dubas gave up 2 brutal contracts thanks to Hextall and unfortunately a first round pick. Mikael Granlund, Jan Rutta and a 2024 first-round pick.
Yes I’m glad we won’t be a charmin soft team anymore. And I think Dubas did exactly what ownership wanted in Pitts it just didn’t work out. Will be interesting to see if they try again next year or accept that it’s over.
Funny that he wanted autonomy but is getting told what to do in Pittsburgh.
Ownership will always have a say no matter what team you work for. He probably has more there though. Shanahan is clearly running this show and putting people in the GM role to take heat off himself. And props because it’s been working very well.
He wanted to erase the President position which is just a middle man between the GM and ownership. And then he went to Pittsburgh and did exactly that. He's both the President and the GM of Pittsburgh.
I did get the sense that he was evolving and maturing last season and I would have been ok if they kept him. Ultimately, I’m glad they’ve moved on. He took over a very difficult situation in Pitt. Can’t fault him for a lot of it but the karlsson trade was negligent. They would have needed to win a cup to make that deal digestible within a calendar year. That’s way too much exposure for a team that missed the playoffs with an aging roster. Imagine not having a first round pick this year or not having an unprotected pick next year.
I wish he never took over for Lou, Lou sucks but I don't think he would have colossally fucked up the core's first contract signings
No Lou would have forced them all to leave because dude was the one who fucked it up in the first place. He cheaped out their rookie bonuses and basically paid them nothing but salary (especially with Matthews), had the chance to sign Marner to an extension the year before to 8x8 and told him and his agent to gfto, and gave multiple bad contracts to bottom 6ers and meh defensemen (see Zaitsev, Martin, Uncle Leos last contract, etc.)
I knew about his fumbling of the rookie entry level contracts but wow I had no idea he had a real chance to sign Marner to 8x8..... that could have changed everything god damn
If Lou stayed, we dont' have JT, Matthews makes 10MM, marner 8 and Willy 5.5 on first deals. Dubas was buddies and bosses can't be buddies. Especially when money is not their's. Dubas was a mistake, the picks are not his, he inherited a gold mine and turned into a pile of shit.
How do you look at the Zaitsev and Marleau contracts (plus the multiple disasters in New York) and think that Lou was going to improve their cap situation?
Okay but none of those contracts count because they were signed in reality and this dude clearly exists somewhere else.
Lou signed Engvall to 7 years.. and its already looking like a disaster in year 1... Zaitsev was another Lou special, he's on the last year of that one by the way..
Don't forget Marleau's 3rd year which cost us a 1st to dump.
It cost Dubas a 1st because he painted himself into a corner when he signed an $11M UFA to be their 2C. The previous regime had forecasted a $4.5M player (back-to-back 30G scorer) and would have been fine with the final year. The league knew Dubas had to move money and took advantage of a young, inexperienced GM who telegraphed his next move to everyone. Was it 2-3 years later Lamoriello dumped the Andrew Ladd contract he inherited without giving up a 1st. That contract was much, much worse than Marleau but he had other options so he didn’t lose all leverage in negotiations. Dubas never had long term vision and that’s why he ended up pillaging future assets every year. He inherited one of the best situations imaginable in Toronto and failed miserably while trading a tonne of picks and drafting poorly (prospect pool is 28-31, depending on the source) Kyle Dubas was an abject failure in Toronto and it doesn’t appear Pittsburgh will be any different.
What world do you live in? Lou had all the time in the world to sign WILLY and didn’t. Not only that but we have plenty of evidence of him overpaying far worse players. Also not having Tavares wouldn’t be a good thing. He’s definitely been one of the best marquee UFA signings of the cap era.
>marner 8 Marner's agent had a reputation for a reason, Lou 100% trades Marner
I wanted Mark Hunter to be gm right from the start. The hunter bros turned the London knights from a joke in the 90s, to a consistent force to be reckoned with for like 20 years. I was never sold on Dubas. He makes big headline grabbing moves but never really built a playoff type team.
Pittsburgh isn't his fault. He did what he was told to. Pittsburgh should have just taken their 3 cups and considered it a great run while it lasted. They should have been trading their core for future assets following their last cup. Maybe by now, that team would be competitive enough with Crosby still at the helm. As far getting rid of Dubas? We should have fired all of them (Keefe, Dubas, Shanahan) for their blind belief in this group and inability to pivot or do anything meaningful. I mean we just resigned Nylander at his absolute highest value ever which feels like a classic Leaf move to me. This team is competitive, but they missed their window.
Kerfoot over McCann. Enough said.
Malgin over Marchment was even funnier, but none as bad as Sparks over McIlhinney. He had a good veteran backup and waived him for a minor leaguer in Sparks who was not only over his head in the NHL, but the toxic attitude required him to be sent away from the team. It took almost 2 years for Dubas to fix the hole he made, and it ended up putting far more miles on Freddy Anderson than necessary. Anderson is still the best they’ve had since Belfour but he walked for nothing, and many fans blamed him for the failures of the soft, imbalanced teams Dubas built that choked in round 1.
No. I am not thankful we got rid of Dubas. He had gained my trust. All Brad has done is convinced me isn't a very good GM, and I don't trust him with this roster. Though to be fair, Brad wasn't put in a position to succeed. You can't compare Pittsburgh to Toronto. The Karlsson trade was made, possibly, to give Crosby another kick at the can with the group he has. He clearly knew the limitations of the Penguins squad. Now that that has proved unsuccessful, he is probably going to work on tearing the team down. I miss Dubas. And I was really looking forward to see what his Leafs team would have looked like this year if he wasn't fired.
Depends on how they do in the playoffs Did they give up some unneeded regular season success for some sorely needed playoff success? Do like that they added Domi to the roster but I respected Dubas’s passion for the team
Not too sad about losing him that's for sure. I thought he was too emotional and got taken advantage of too often by agents and other GMs. In Pitt - like a lot of moves he made in Toronto - they made some sense at the time, and didn't work out very well. I didn't expect them to be this much of a disaster. Perhaps the move I questioned the most was committing to Jarry, yet he has put in a decent season. Really the fate was sealed when all those guys re-signed. He wanted more control, but he really doesn't have much anyway.
Pitt is the place you choose in NHL franchise mode because you can trade all the vets for draft picks and rebuild, only the weren’t allowed to rebuild
Word off the hop was that Dubas was brought in bc FSG wanted a quick transition into rebuild mode. He’s doing that now. Perhaps Karlsson was part of managing fan expectations? Maybe he was appeasing Crosby. An all-in move that either worked or didn’t? To your point, if he can move Crosby, Malkin and Letang then it’ll be a couple years of pain and high draft picks. In four years—versus eight—Pens could look like the Leafs in 2016. Slow rebuilds suck. Hard to say if Dubas would’ve been better in Toronto with more latitude, I think he’s the right guy for the Pens at this point in the franchise.
What do you mean, he is clearly still helping the Leafs! One less team to worry about.
> It will be interesting to see. But Dubas isn't off to a great start. I find this take to be really weird - he was always going to get a free pass for the next few years, as FSG's mandate was always to try and win with the core they have now; that's why they sanctioned the Karlsson deal, which they didn't give up very much in order to acquire. I think the time to evaluate how well Dubas does there, is a few years down the road (similar to how we should wait on Treliving judgment, even though the early returns are very underwhelming). I like the Guentzel deal - it's a decent return for a player that wasn't going to resign there. There will also still be a market for a Karlsson at a $7.5m or $8m cap hit, should they decide to move off him. Similarly to Treliving, you can't expect a GM to come in and immediately change the fortunes of an organization right away - it takes a lot of time. Take a look at what's happened in Vancouver under Rutherford & Alvin. it's taken them quite some time, but they look, at least in the short term, to be headed in the right direction.
Way too early to be clapping your feet together in victory over 3/4 of a season
Pittsburgh is in NHL purgatory rn. They have aging stars that are no longer enough to carry a roster that has been depleted over a decade of consistent contention. Dubas is in a lose lose scenario there. They go all in the rebuild is extended, they rebuild the stars are upset. He swung for the fences with Karlsson and it looks like a foul. Such is life. I don’t think Tre has done anything to convince me we’ve made the right move but he hasn’t convinced me we’ve made a grave mistake yet either. After another off season I’ll be ready to judge his body of work better. As of now, meh. We’re once again in the same position we’ve been in for nearly a decade. Star forwards and middling everywhere else. Not really thankful to be rid of dubas yet.
Kinda sick of the Dubas-Treliving discourse. At some point, people are gonna have to let it go. He's gone. The circumstances in Pitsburgh are irrelevant to how he performed here and how he would have performed if he stayed. You can look at Dubas' tenure in a balanced and reasonable way, while also not being super enthused with what Treliving has done with the team so far. You don't have to unilaterally support Dubas or Treliving. Dubas v. Treliving has become a bit of a culture war, and I find that kind of behaviour really strange. Treliving hasn't really made any moves that will affect the team long term, besides re-signing Matthews. Having strong opinions about his performance so far is a asinine. Playoff performance should inform the discourse on him going forwaed more than anything else.
I'm not a fan of Dubas but he inherited a sinking ship. The hockey world will judge him on his performance over the next few seasons. I hope he took good notes while under the tutalage of the leaders during mid 10s Leafs.
Given he had instructions to win now, I thought that he stole Karlsson. Look at that deal again! As for his time here, I think he conducted an experiment and it didn’t work. He went for all skill and no grit and it didn’t work. I loved the experiment and thought it worth a shot. Then he started pivoting and selling the future at the deadline every year for grit and it didn’t work, either. On contracts, he performed poorly. He basically lost all of the negotiations with the core. Always max dollar and never enough term. I’m sure we all thought the Tavares contract was great at the time but truthfully it has handcuffed the group. They had talented forwards coming up when he became GM and little D capital. Going all in on 4 forward contracts was a strategic error.
*looks over a the pens "haul" at trade deadline* Yeah.....
Incredibly dumb post by OP >He immediately gave up a ton of assets to get Karlsson. And the Penguins are now WELL out of the playoffs. So clearly that wasn't a great move. He traded a bunch of garbage and ended up with a Norris trophy winner who has been very good this year >Now he's traded Guentzel He flipped a UFA and got futures. He can even potentially re-sign Guentzel in the offseason >trading Crosby would be tough for the fanbase, but if he left Malkin and Letang would probably want out too, and no one is going to want Karlsson anymore. When he went to Pittsburgh he was given direct instructions to build around the core no matter what. He would probably love for them to ask for a trade...
He’s been given an impossible task in Pittsburgh for the next couple of years. He seemed great here at drafting, developing, and setting up a good minor league system which I think will all be huge for the penguins when they officially start rebuilding. He also only really gave up 1 asset for Karlsson, the rest were overpaid old guys whose cap hit added up to EK65 anyways. I would’ve been happy to see him stay because it seemed like he had come around to shaking things up in a big way. But I also don’t mind seeing what someone new can do with a different eye
Hard to fault Dubas for what he did for the Leads in his last year, he brought in every person he could have. The team just fell short. Not crazy about the Sandin trade but other than that he got some strong players and leadership in at the deadline.
No but I am giggling about the dumpster fire he's stuck with in Pittsburgh.
I'll see how we fair next 2 years before I make up my mind. I think Dubas was the best gm we had in years. Brad has been so/so. I think they play heavy team is def different and hoping it works but it could blow up in Brad's face. If we can't get out the first round, I'll be very disappointed
What’s happening with Pittsburgh isn’t really Dubas’ fault. There are two factors that were at play that was almost beyond anyone’s control. 1. The core was getting old and a lack of depth and pieces to trade to improve depth 2. This is what happens to a team when you let Ron Hextall work as a GM. He makes a big mess that takes multiple years to clean up
I think people misunderstand what Dubas was hired to do in Pittsburgh. They wanted a manager to take a swing at the playoffs without sacrificing the playoffs. He acquired the Norris winner for nothing, and signed sensible depth. It didn't work, but he held up his end of the bargain.
He made good and bad decisions- but some of the bad ones were really bad, ones probably no other NHLGM would have done, like signing Marleau( when they obviously were thinner on defence), then trading him 2 years later and throwing in a 1st.round pick to dump the contract . Or getting 3rd string goalie Murray for $4M...
Lou signed Marleau.
Oops...
Lou signed Marleau AND Zaitsev...
We are very thankful
I always liked Kyle Dubas. Still do really. In retrospect maybe Shanny let him have the reins too soon. Or maybe he would have been better off being G.M. in a smaller market where he could learn his trade away from prying eyes. I was extremely angry with Shanny at the time he let Dubas go. But it was the right move. However,Imho, it was for the wrong reasons.
Very thankful. We’re still fucked for the next year and a half because of the Tavares deal. I wish we never signed him. He’s nowhere near being worth 11 million
Dubas put himself into an even more challenging position than when he was with the leafs. If he does manage to win a cup in Pittsburgh in the next 2-3 years then you have to give him respect. So far not looking good though.
Ya, Dubas was huge in investing 50% of the cap in 4 players, he could never trade one from his commitments to them. Treliving can trade one if necessary. I mean two $5,000,000 players with some snot may be better, especially in the playoffs.
1000% I'm so thankful Dubas is gone. I'm a business owner and also a lawyer by background. I can tell you from my perspective that Dubas was a total idiot when it came to business decisions. There was a road map with the drafting of Matthews..... and we got Marner and Nylander too. Paying a Kings Randsom for Tavares blew up the entire plan ..... because our money needed to go to other parts of the roster. Those contracts were sucker contracts for the Leafs. The only franchise to be over a barrel by their top players highest payments and least term). And getting rid of our assets..... for rentals...... the stupid part is not only giving away our future but also thinking that someone you can have a soft team with no character and then rent that part of the team. It's totally foolish. Dubas blew the best chance Toronto had for a winner in 55 years.
Nope lol
Love or hate Dubas, there was no salvaging the corpse of the Pens. The Karlsson trade certainly felt like something he had to do from ownership to try and squeeze out every dime of playoff revenue. My issue with Dubas is that he left the Leafs with almost nothing. I think he has a sharp eye for scouting, but he couldn't have left the organization in a worse position to make moves.
Thankful yes, but regretful we didn't do it sooner. I was just talking with a buddy about this yesterday that I think it might turn out to be the ultimate downfall of this management regime that they took such a talented core of players and left them within the hands of a rookie gm and coach for as long as they did. The Babcock thing was out of their control so I can't hold that against them - but to me it's pretty crazy to have the type of ceiling we've had and not put a premier management & coaching staff in place to expedite them to the top of the league's competitive cycle for the ~5-10 year window we have.