Right back to losing the next night.  This is a pretty flawed offense right now

The Leafs had a bunch of trades come out of nowhere because Dubas did not have leaks.  That carried over from when Lou took over the organization.  That deal 100% was leaked by Chicago at the time and the report was always that it was a move offered by Chicago and that Dubas wasn't going to trade Knies.  I don't think that is a shocking revelation....although Hagel would have been a nice acquisition.

Honestly, I don't get the handwringing about all of this. Yes, things haven't played out how many of us would have liked them to, but the jump to suddenly the team doesn't have competent leadership feels like a huge stretch and a surface level media narrative. Anyone who has been around the league (or any business) long enough would have contingency plans in place, and I'm sure Shanahan and MLSE do.

I think the "handwringing" about this boils down to three key points:

1. After yet another tough beat in the playoffs this can read, the Leafs not getting their #1 choice to run the club, like another moral defeat.

2. There are people with concerns, as yet unfounded but with a fair argument behind them, that this could be detrimental for bringing guys like Matthews back(which I think we all agree is more important than whoever the GM might be)

3. The way in which it happened reveals both perhaps a less stable organization than some would like as well as suggests that there's no particular plan for improvement.

And for what it's worth when the subject of keeping Dubas came up I said pretty clearly I wasn't all that fussed either way. If, after the season, Shanahan had just come out and said "We weren't happy with where the team was so we're going to go in another direction" I may not have immediately been convinced that things were going to be improving but it would at least come off as stable and forthright decision making.

Obviously everything is conjecture until we have a new GM announced but the names that are being floated aren't really the ones that make me excited.  I understand that the organization hasn't won with Dubas/Pridham at the helm but I like the general approach to things with an analytics/forward thinking organization.  Names like Treiliving don't make me feel like we are moving toward an improvement in management

I'm just going to go ahead and throw my name in the hat for GM.  I'll do whatever the board tells me to do as long as there is a pay check in it.

I don't think he's a terrible option as GM but he seems like a Melba toast selection

He's the best most mediocre option available probably. The Flames averaged 93 points a season with him as GM. So continually stuck between being bad enough to get a good draft pick and good enough to actually compete for the Cup. They won 2 playoff series and missed the playoffs 4 times. Regular season points percentage over .600 just twice. Coaches he hired were: Glen Gulutzan (who?), Bill Peters (ugh), and Darryl Sutter. Sutter's the interesting one since he arguably both saved his job in 21/22 and then later cost him his job in 22/23, and by also most accounts was a hire that ownership kinda/sorta forced on him.

Can we do worse? Sure. Can we do better with all of MLSE's vast resources? Well, apparently not.

I get that the media is going to throw stuff at the wall just for page views (poor Dreger not being able to throw Nonis' name around) but it really feels like the organization wants to regress and I hate it.

Treliving has been in Calgary for 9 seasons.  He was hired in April 2014 so I'm going to give him credit for that draft too:

1st - Sam Bennett (4), Matthew Tkachuck (6), Juuso Valimaki (16), Jakob Pelletier (26), Matt Coronato (13)
2nd - Rasmus Andersson (53), Oliver Kylington (60), Dillon Dube (56)
3rd - Adam Fox (66)
4th - Adam Ruzicka (109)
5th -
6th - Andrew Mangiapane (166), Matthew Phillips (166)
7th - Dustin Wolf (214)

13 of 54 picks played at least 1 game in the NHL.  His best pick is Adam Fox who chose not to sign with Calgary and went to the Rangers.  Mangiapane, Andersson and Mylington were solid non-first round picks.

In contract Dubas has 9 of his 35 draft picks playing at least 1 game in the NHL.  I'm not going to delve into who was/wasn't a Dubas pick in the prior drafts when he was still AGM.

Treliving has a few more guys with longer established tracts than Dubas but I don't really see his draft history as anything overly remarkable.

His trade history also strikes me as kind of meh.  I don't think the Tkachuk trade was terrible based on the trade request but it didn't really make the Flames any better (and I think is a bit relevant given the Leafs core 4 scenario).  He acquired Lucic for a broken down James Neal.  Made a couple of trade down for more picks moves at the draft.  Traded for Dougie Hamilton (1st and 2 2nds) and then later traded him and a few lesser players (including Adam Fox) for Noah Hanifin and and Elias Lindholm.

I don't think he's a terrible option as GM but he seems like a Melba toast selection

What's great is that there's going to be absolutely no reflection from the people who thought the Leafs struggling to score against Florida was evidence of a deep character flaw.

This is pretty insane what Bobrovsky is doing.  He looked like garbage most of the year and was a below average goaltender.

Montreal goes to the finals, Tampa goes to the finals and now likely Florida goes to the finals as our last three playoff opponents

No question Shanahan and the board bear some responsibility for where we find ourselves today. However, a significant portion of the responsibility is also on Kyle Dubas.

People are accusing Shanahan of being unprofessional.  But it was Shanahan who advised Dubas against doing a presser until the deal was done, but Dubas insisted.  He then proceeded to share his personal issues in public — a very questionable decision and, to many people, including me, an unprofessional one.

Again, I like many things about Dubas but he is by no means a fully polished manager.  His set-to with the fans in Tampa was, as he himself admitted, probably foolish.

So I agree with cw here: there's blame to be had on both sides.

I get that but it would have been incredibly weird to have the GM refuse to speak on locker clean out day. 

Really not liking some of the stuff coming from Friedman about the board meddling in decision making. 

I think we are heading for the demise of the franchise again.

He was held back initially due to insurance reasons.  Is it a Toronto Maple Leafs issue or an insurance problem.  Wasn't there reports of him wearing some supports on his back part way through the year.  Would certainly explain his drop off in play down the stretch and in the postseason. 

If he couldn't get signed off for insurance maybe it wasn't worth the risk of him going.  Particularly with a contract extension on the horizon (with the Leafs or elsewhere)

https://theathletic.com/4536147/2023/05/20/maple-leafs-kyle-dubas-brendan-shanahan/

As reported previously in the aftermath of the Leafs elimination, Shanahan and Dubas had been at odds for a while. On Friday, more details emerged on that front. Multiple sources close to the team said that Shanahan had blocked transactions that Dubas wanted to make at key points in the past several seasons, creating frustration in parts of the management group. Shanahan had also at times dictated certain moves he wanted made that Dubas didn't agree with.

The president, as per his place in the hierarchy, typically won out in those battles. And, in some cases, the moves that weren't made could have improved the Leafs' ability to advance further in the playoffs.

This is flipping damning if that is the case.  If Shanahan has been dictating moves/blocking moves this organization is screwed.  This whole situation blows. 

I'd want to know what moves we're talking about here. Foligno over Hall? McCabe over Orlov? Murray instead of a cheaper tandem? There aren't many things that would've really changed their chances in the playoffs outside of moving one of the core, and I doubt Dubas was pretending that he was as committed to them as he was until 2 weeks ago.

The thing is it could be moves that we just don't know about.  We know the trades that actually happened but there can be dozens of trades that start to be discussed but fall through, or free agents that get discussed but don't get to a formal contract offer.

Unless we get a tell all interview years from now I doubt we get any of that detail.  I also don't expect to see Dubas really leaking that stuff at this point with any level of detail.  After watching Shanahan's press conference, I'm less convinced that he wouldn't throw out details but I don't expect that either.

I think the Amazon documentary showed a bit of that window into the Foligno trade and getting permission to make a move although who knows what else was done.  I just don't like the idea of a hamstrung GM and I feel like we are about to go back to an old retread GM for the sake of "experience"

At the same time what had Kyle really done to show he was so much better than everyone else in the results column? I'm not saying we should go back to the dinosaur era but I think even an idiot like JFJ could take the core 4 and lose in the first round every year. I think we can find a happy medium with someone has experience and who isn't afraid to make drastic change when needed, and not just sound dejected in a press conference once he realized after years and years that his grand plan had failed (literally referencing Florida directly) when he should've pivoted sooner.

I guess, but Florida was Pittsburgh not losing to a Chicago team trying to get Bedard away from not even getting a chance in the playoffs.  I'm not sure that the Tkachuck deal is necessarily the move that proves what they did worked although I certainly would agree that they ended up getting the best player in the deal.

Also while the lack of playoff success should be a knock on Dubas, I don't think a JFJ style GM would have been able to work around the cap restraints to make things work.  So I do think that Dubas putting together consistent regular season elite rosters hasn't just been a byproduct of benefitting from having four expensive forwards.

Thinking back on past moves that would be considered a star player being traded for something else

PK Subban for Shea Weber.  Certainly seemed like a good deal for the Habs in the end, not as good for the Predators.

Thornton getting traded from Boston for Sturm, Primeau, Stuart.  That was not a good trade for Boston although worked out pretty well for San Jose.

Clark for Sundin.  Long run it worked out for the Leafs but they had two first round eliminations in the first two years with Mats and it wasn't until his 5th year with the team that they had a deep run.

Obviously Huberdeau for Tkachuck is notable here but it's also notable that one team missed the playoffs and the other team almost missed the playoffs before going on a deep run.

Change probably needs to happen here because staying the course hasn't worked but this just seems like disorganization at this point and that generally isn't when you make the best decisions.  Particularly with short term deadlines.

Pridham is handling things right now.  New GM comes in and kicks him out or keeps him.  Who knows.  Pridham isn't going to get the ok to trade Matthews before a new GM is hired so any negotiating is going to be superficial at best and can all be scrapped the second the new GM comes into play.   I don't like how things played out, but I think you either trusted Dubas to do the job or didn't.  Not giving your GM autonomy after 5 years on the job just seems asinine (money aside).

https://theathletic.com/4536147/2023/05/20/maple-leafs-kyle-dubas-brendan-shanahan/

As reported previously in the aftermath of the Leafs elimination, Shanahan and Dubas had been at odds for a while. On Friday, more details emerged on that front. Multiple sources close to the team said that Shanahan had blocked transactions that Dubas wanted to make at key points in the past several seasons, creating frustration in parts of the management group. Shanahan had also at times dictated certain moves he wanted made that Dubas didn't agree with.

The president, as per his place in the hierarchy, typically won out in those battles. And, in some cases, the moves that weren't made could have improved the Leafs' ability to advance further in the playoffs.

This is flipping damning if that is the case.  If Shanahan has been dictating moves/blocking moves this organization is screwed.  This whole situation blows. 

I'd want to know what moves we're talking about here. Foligno over Hall? McCabe over Orlov? Murray instead of a cheaper tandem? There aren't many things that would've really changed their chances in the playoffs outside of moving one of the core, and I doubt Dubas was pretending that he was as committed to them as he was until 2 weeks ago.

The thing is it could be moves that we just don't know about.  We know the trades that actually happened but there can be dozens of trades that start to be discussed but fall through, or free agents that get discussed but don't get to a formal contract offer.

Unless we get a tell all interview years from now I doubt we get any of that detail.  I also don't expect to see Dubas really leaking that stuff at this point with any level of detail.  After watching Shanahan's press conference, I'm less convinced that he wouldn't throw out details but I don't expect that either.

I think the Amazon documentary showed a bit of that window into the Foligno trade and getting permission to make a move although who knows what else was done.  I just don't like the idea of a hamstrung GM and I feel like we are about to go back to an old retread GM for the sake of "experience"

https://theathletic.com/4536147/2023/05/20/maple-leafs-kyle-dubas-brendan-shanahan/

As reported previously in the aftermath of the Leafs elimination, Shanahan and Dubas had been at odds for a while. On Friday, more details emerged on that front. Multiple sources close to the team said that Shanahan had blocked transactions that Dubas wanted to make at key points in the past several seasons, creating frustration in parts of the management group. Shanahan had also at times dictated certain moves he wanted made that Dubas didn't agree with.

The president, as per his place in the hierarchy, typically won out in those battles. And, in some cases, the moves that weren't made could have improved the Leafs' ability to advance further in the playoffs.

This is flipping damning if that is the case.  If Shanahan has been dictating moves/blocking moves this organization is screwed.  This whole situation blows. 

What has Dubas accomplished in Toronto? This team had tread water for 5 years, making it out of the first round by the skin of their teeth, exactly once. 

How many draft picks under his watch are on the team? 

Maybe it all became a little too lovey dovey let's all sit around and sing kumbaya. 

What has Shanahan accomplished in Toronto.  It's been 9 years.  He's about to go to his 3rd GM hire (4th total), very likely his fifth coach and he's been here from the get go.  This whole scenario stinks too to bottom

So what are the odds of Dubas and Spezza taking their talents up the 401?

Honestly I hope they do at this point.