Man, he must have taken the Dubas news hard.

First hire for Treliving, replacing the departed Spencer Carbury with Bruce Boudreau. 😎

I don't want Boudreau's career to end the way it did in Vancouver.

Certainly not the first time it's been suggested for Boudreau. Even before he was picked up by Vancouver there were calls to make him an assistant. I feel like Treliving would need to commit to Keefe with an extension first as well though. It would be a massive distraction and not fair to anyone if a possible Boudreau promotion was looming over Keefe all season long.

Having a very, very experienced AC could be a good thing for Keefe too. As far as I remember his assistants have generally been either somewhat new or very new to the NHL as well.

I'm still struggling to see how this is bad optics for Toronto or Dubas. On one hand, you had a GM cast doubt on whether he wanted to continue which was then followed by an ask for lots of money. I look at that ask as a "well if I'm going to do it, I may as well swing for the fences" kind of ask. Dubas was well within his rights to do so. As was Toronto well within their rights to walk away from said request and the GM that had cast doubts in their minds.

Was Dubas' press conference pre firing well handled? Nope
Was Shanahan's handling of the situation following that done properly? Probably not

Is either of those really that much of a disaster to the point that there's been two weeks of media drama? I personally don't think so.

That's a bingo. At the time, I was considerably a lot more against Shanahan over what happened. Which shouldn't be all that surprising since I've openly been a supporter for Dubas since his first day in the organization.

I've cooled off a lot in the past 2 weeks. Worst thing I can say now is that I do believe the Leafs acted a little too hastily in deciding to fire him almost immediately after that new contract demand. I can't imagine there wasn't some middle ground that could have been found there. But it also sounds like that may have been a bit of an upstairs call, so whatever.

There's no villains in this story though, regardless of which way you look at it. It's unfortunate the way this era ended but life will go on in Leafland and Dubas will enjoy his new job in Pittsburgh.

If there is anything to take away from the Cup finalists this season, it's playing fast and as a unified group. Simple games at a strong pace can really let your offensive talents flourish. Slow, methodical and too easily disrupted games wastes your goalscoring skill in DZ efforts.

I get that to a certain degree (maybe a large degree) Carolina got goalie'd in the 3rd round, but watching a team that was considered by many to be the most structured team in the league both offensively and defensively just fall apart against whatever the heck system Florida was playing made me question some of my beliefs about hockey a little bit.

This one's not that deep.

At the time he only saw two options for himself: Leafs or take a step back. Dubas decided against the option to take a step back, and then Shanahan/MLSE took away the Leafs option. To think that he's then not allowed to look at a 3rd option at that point is bizarre.

I think they're going to evaluate Keefe over the next little bit while also taking a glance at the options available to replace him at the moment. I haven't exactly been a big Keefe guy for awhile, but I do think there's an argument to make that there's not exactly anybody out there who is a definite, 100% improvement.

Treliving's conversations with Matthews and what his opinion's on Keefe are could also sway things. On the one hand this team might need a bit of a stricter coach in order to succeed. On the other hand if Matthews has a favourable opinion on Keefe him staying might, at least in a small way, help push him to an extension this offseason while if a new coach comes on board he might elect to push the decision down the line a little bit.

I'm not getting into who's right or wrong because a) there probably isn't a 100% correct answer to that and b) if there was we'll never all all the information to make that call but it's pretty wild how people can come to such drastically different conclusions on what happened that fateful week based on the same set of information everyone got.

https://twitter.com/LeafsNews/status/1664303146892509184

Full comments can be found here.

I didn't say a deal was in place or airtight "proves" anything because there's no way for us to know without more details, but there's a reason why Pitt put everything on hold once the Leafs got bounced. I think that indicates heavy interest, and if we knew about it through the media then Kyle obviously knew about it and thensome. How frequently have we heard "tampering haha" in the last few days? Point being is Dubas knew something enticing was on the table, and once the details were ironed out he went for it.

I think Dubas knew his value around the league and didn't think the contract he was being offered, both in terms of money and power, met that value. Whether he should have approached that issue with the Leafs differently is obviously another story. But in the end he got what he wanted. Good luck to him there.

Media is actually firing some decent questions

Except for that last one.

Yeah. Did anyone catch who asked it?

I think they have somewhat contender status, but I still think the prudent course of action here is at minimum a retool and if not a full rebuild.

The definition of a "retool" is pretty up in the air. I mean I could see them trying to make some changes but the end goal even for this upcoming season needs to be a Cup. Crosby and Malkin turn 36 and 37 this summer respectively. Clocks ticking. And if Dubas can get them another Cup before their retirement he'll be given as much rope as humanly possible to orchestrate a full rebuild after that (with them almost certainly winning a big lottery whenever it comes up).

This has nothing to do with how he'll do as GM, but Treliving is significantly less of a robot than I sorta figured he'd be.

"Good to see Gio still playing at 75" lol

Treliving notes that he has a long standing relationship with Pridham dating back to when he was in Arizona and Pridham was with the NHL.

Pittsburgh does feel a lot like Toronto. They have a pretty solid core. They have a sort of big-4 up front with Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Rust. Their D lacks a stud now that Letang is a little older but him, Petry, Pettersson, and potentially Dumoulin if they re-sign him is certainly above average. Question mark in net with Jarry.

They have a decent chunk of cap space, more if Dubas can find a new home for Granlund and/or Carter. They have all their 1st rounders, so expect to see one or two of those get moved at some point in the future. Pittsburgh will basically be all-in for at least the next 2 years to try and get Crosby another Cup. There's work to be done but they still have contender potential.

He said the f-word again. Wish they had Shanahan on camera too.