Bender said:
L K said:
mr grieves said:
L K said:
herman said:
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).
