That’s what makes this so blatant - the Leafs were clearly the better team.
The glaring hole is in grit and ‘hard to play against’ ... the teams who’ve been successful recently, have it in spades. The elite talent at the top is important, but the composition of your depth support matters.
Bringing in cheap players like Nick Petan shows Dubas just doesn’t get it. Trevor Moore? Yes, he has balls. Petan? For what?
Except it's not the glaring hole. Our biggest issues were penalty killing which has little to nothing to do with grit, Kadri voluntarily removing himself from the series and lack of quality defensive depth which yet again isn't a grit problem.
We had Gardiner & Dermott both playing with really significant injuries and looked like it. Every team deals with injuries, I get that, and it's not me making excuses here, so much as I'm saying we needed more behind these guys so we could be in a position where they didn't play.
If you want to chastise Dubas for something, and you clearly do, at least pick something legitimate like overestimating his depth defense. I doubt he makes that mistake again.
And why are we even talking about Petan? He traded out a completely useless player in Par Lindholm for a player who didn't end up playing. The difference being the one he got back has upside, is way younger and isn't on an expiring contract.