For as long as I live I never want a rookie GM in charge of the Leafs again. 3 f*** ups is more than enough to tell you it doesn’t work. Sure, we’ve had vet GMs like Burke and Nonis f*** up this franchise too, but there have also been veteran GMs who’ve led this team to the little success this franchise has experienced, you can’t say that about a rookie GM. Fletcher and Quinn might not have won it all but they were a hell of a lot better than any of Stellick, JFJ, and Dubas.
You even have recent loser or new comer. Your choice. You rarely get proven winner from anywhere, because why they would come here? This is hard market and fans are always bitchin about something. Now it is this Einstein & Churchill bullshit in this thread like things in hockey world are simple.
Dubas has tweaked his approach after every season his been here. He painted himself in the corner with those RFA contracts and can't do that much because of it. Though he started behind eight ball, because Lous contract magic. So it has been slow build for our defence. We got screwed twice, once by those contracts and second was covid.
We already changed our draft strategy twice and those were drastic changes. We got experienced guy in Hunter and he was worse than Morrison. Now Dubas is doing his thing and we don't even know yet if it's working. As team we have gone from skill approach to more hybrid over time.
If you make drastic changes season after season after season and then major shake up every three years you never win. Never. Not in cap world. All this recent good teams has built their systems for years before contending. Tampa Bay had 10-15 years build. Even pre cap era Detroit had long build up.
If we every time lose our patience too early, we're going to do same mistake over and over again. That is not having patience. I think that dictated failures of JFJ and Burke, because our ownership wanted us to do quick retooling. Same that Oilers wanted with Chiarelli, now they're on the no mans land.
I don't know if Dubas is right GM for this team, but I'd rather try with this core once more than gave up year too early. Even after that we have good building blocks in place and we can do basicly anything we want. I see logic what he does outside of Marners contract that I can't get trough my head. Even with Nylander and Matthews he messed up negotiations, but didn't make as drastic mistake that he made with Mitch. Though every GM will make mistakes, sometimes even big mistakes and Lou that we miss so dearly have made bunch of those and I don't he have learned thing about those last 10 years. With Dubas I think we have chance that he learns his lessons.