The Masters
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- Jun 30, 2018
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With contract expiring, Kyle Dubas' job as Maple Leafs GM is on the line this season
Dubas will soon become the Maple Leafs' longest-serving GM in 25 years, but will they keep him if the playoff woes continue?
theathletic.com
Kyle Dubas will soon become the Maple Leafs’ longest-serving general manager in 25 years.
The upcoming 2022-23 season will be Dubas’ fifth as Leafs GM, a run that outlasts Brian Burke, Pat Quinn and every other predecessor who came before him since Cliff Fletcher was fired in 1997.
This could also be Dubas’ last season running the Leafs. His job is literally on the line this season.
Dubas is entering the final year of the five-year contract he signed after replacing Lou Lamoriello as GM in 2018. Unlike team president Brendan Shanahan, who received a six-year extension in 2019, there’s been no apparent extension of Dubas’ contract. (Shanahan did not respond to a request for confirmation.)
Which is, well, interesting.
On the one hand, the rationale for not doing so is obvious. Dubas’ team (but also, of course, Shanahan’s team) has yet to advance past the first round of the postseason. The lack of an extension suggests that either Shanahan or ownership, maybe both, want — need — progress of some kind when it matters before they commit to Dubas beyond this season.
Understandable — sort of.
A lame-duck GM of a Stanley Cup hopeful, on the other hand, isn’t standard operating procedure.
It puts the GM in an awkward position, with moves suddenly scrutinized not just in the context of the team but the GM’s own personal future.
Another thing: The team that Dubas put together last regular season was — by far — the best in franchise history. The 2021-22 Leafs piled up 115 points — 10 points more than the previous franchise record-holder from the 2017-18 season. That team lost in the first round of the playoffs again, but by a goal in Game 7 to the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions.
Dubas’ last two regular-season teams rank first and second in franchise history by points percentage.
He is, without question, the franchise’s most effective GM since Quinn, and one of the more effective GMs in the league during his run in charge (if also the most harshly judged). (The praise of Senators GM Pierre Dorion this summer is a little rich considering his team has missed the playoffs in each of the past five seasons, falling 27(!) points shy last season.)
Only four teams own a better points percentage than the Dubas-led Leafs (.643): Tampa (.698), Boston (.667), Colorado (.660) and Carolina (.653).
And yet, even Dubas himself would surely acknowledge that regular-season success doesn’t mean a whole lot if nothing comes of it in the playoffs — repeatedly. And because the teams he’s built have come up short when it matters again and again, his biggest mistakes (trading Nazem Kadri, trading for Nick Foligno) look worse than they might have had the Leafs won even one round over the years.
Just one playoff series victory next spring probably ensures that Dubas is around beyond this season. Another dominant regular season, on the other hand, with the same old result in the postseason and who knows what the Leafs do with their GM or anyone else for that matter, including Shanahan, who’s overseen the team as president since 2014.
Could the Leafs keep Dubas if the playoff woes continue? Maybe with the stipulation that the coach changes. Sheldon Keefe is Dubas’ first and only head coaching hire as Leafs GM. Or maybe Dubas is forced to finally trade a core piece.
He could also leave of his own accord, and probably wouldn’t have much trouble at all finding another job in hockey.
This could also be the year that his team finally gets over the hump. The year that his loyalty to this group is finally rewarded.
That’s really what stands out most about Dubas’ tenure as GM.
Year after year, he’s stood behind teams that have repeatedly let him down when it mattered. He’s never taken a sledgehammer to the core of Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly and Jake Muzzin. It’s hard to imagine almost any other GM in the NHL operating with that degree of loyalty. A trade to “change the mix” would very likely have gone down by now if say, Lamoriello, were still in the GM’s chair.
Dubas’ roll of the dice in goal, not once (Matt Murray) but twice (Ilya Samsonov), is all the more bold with what’s at stake personally, and for the team.
Maybe the overarching question for the Maple Leafs this season is whether the faith of their GM will finally be rewarded. In the end, loyalty — to those he knows, to those he believes in — will either be what propels Dubas to grander heights as Leafs GM, or what costs him his job.
