TORONTO — In his first half-season as Toronto Maple Leafs general manager, Kyle Dubas engaged in a contract standoff that kept William Nylander away from the team for more than two months.
He saw No. 1 centre Auston Matthews sit out 14 games with a separated shoulder and No. 1 goaltender Frederik Andersen sidelined for eight games with a groin injury.
And yet, despite those absences and a rough stretch since the Christmas break, the 29-17-2 Leafs remain one of the top teams in the NHL. It’s left Dubas thinking that he owes it to his players to make a concerted effort to bolster the roster ahead of the Feb. 25 trade deadline.
“The way that they’ve hung in and handled those things, and if you look at where we’re at in the standings overall, I still have to be very happy about that,” Dubas said Tuesday. “I think they’ve earned the right for us to explore ways that we can continue to make the team better. So we’re trying to do that and if there are things that are fair, we feel that fit for us in the short and long term, then we’ll continue to explore all that.”
It’s no mystery that his top priority remains bringing in some defensive help, although Dubas didn’t get into those kind of specifics in what was billed as his final Q-and-A session with reporters before the trade deadline.
The rookie GM would prefer to stay out of the rental market and instead acquire players with term left on their contracts — a desire complicated by an uncertain salary cap picture next season with Matthews and Mitch Marner still in need of new contracts.
Dubas continues to have dialogue with the Matthews camp on an extension, but has stopped negotiating with Marner at the request of his agent, Darren Ferris, who would prefer to wait for the summer.
In a perfect world, he’d like to have the Matthews contract wrapped up ahead of the deadline. That would give the Leafs GM a clearer long-term picture when making decisions on trades.
