Firstly, I know I am a little late with this post but honestly, it is a question that still has no answers since the news broke about Dubas’ firing on Friday, May 19, 2023, right before a long weekend here in Canada. This news kind of came right out of the right field as it was reported by numerous people that Dubas was to receive and sign his extension on either Tuesday or Wednesday before letting him go.
On the day of Dubas being let go, there were questions as to why the extension had not been signed as of yet but no reported instance that he may be let go. When I received the notification on my phone I was shocked and kind of upset at the whole situation. Dubas was brought in as an Assistant General Manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs back on July 22, 2014, fresh off of being the General Manager of the Soo Greyhounds of the OHL at the age of 28 years old. Since day one he seemed to be the next guy to take over as General Manager of the Maple Leafs and they even brought in Lou Lamoriello to be the General Manager in the meantime and to mold Dubas into a great GM in the future.
On May 11, 2018, the Maple Leafs named Kyle Dubas as the team’s 17th general manager in the history of the franchise. He had a hard time starting his tenure as Gm with the whole William Nylander situation that took up until the 11th hour to get solved but it finally did. At the time it seemed like it was a big loss for Dubas due to the amount of money William got for the first season of the deal but as time went on it looks like it is the best budget deal on the team for the star players.
Say what you want about Dubas he did make some really good moves as General Manager like drafting Matthew Knies, trading for Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari, and replacing Jack Campbell with Ilya Samsonov and he made some bad moves like protecting Justin Holl over newly acquired Jared McCann in the Seattle expansion draft. I know many people will put the Nick Foligno trade and trading Nazim Kadri in his worst moves but on those two moves you couldn’t predict that Nick Foligno will get a back injury that he did and still is not fully recovered from now two years later, and Nazim Kadri, unfortunately, forced the Maple Leafs’ hand in trading him as he was suspended two years in a row in a pivotal playoff series against the Bruins.
So how did we get to the fateful day of May 19, 2023? According to Brenden Shanahan in his press conference, he said that in Mid-March he approached Kyle Dubas and told him that he has seen enough to want Dubas back as the General Manager going forward. He advised Kyle to talk to and get input from his family before they proceed. Kyle did so and about a week later he told Brendan that he wants to stay on and gave him the name of his agent for them to talk and not distract Kyle from his duties as GM. After the game 5 loss in round 2 against Florida Brendan told Kyle that nothing has changed in their thinking and will progress as normal. The Sunday after the series Kyle and Brendan met and talked for hours over a wide variety of hockey-related things, including upcoming decisions they need to make on the team front. During that meeting, Kyle was presented with a framework of a contract that Brendan believed represented what he and Kyle’s agent had been discussing and agreed upon. According to Brendan, Kyle seemed appreciative to receive the offer so quickly and needed to discuss things with his family first. Also in that meeting, Brendan was not planning on talking to the media the next day during the locker cleanout and advised Kyle he felt it would be best that he not as well. Kyle disagreed and said that he felt like he needs to if his coach and players are talking then so should he. Brendan said he respected that decision.
The next day Brendan said that he felt like he might need to look elsewhere to find a GM during Kyle’s press conference and what Kyle disclosed to the media at that time. Brendan says that he feels no ill will towards Kyle for doing so and even praised Kyle for being open and honest about the situation. The next two days there was no resolution and then Kyle had a private meeting with Brendan where he, Brendan, felt like he had more questions than answers to his feelings and questions about Dubas as GM. Thursday Kyle had told Brendan that he and his agent will be in touch with Brendan throughout the day. Shortly after that, Brendan received a new financial amount from Kyle’s agent and they had what was described as a brief conversation. Later in the evening, Brendan received an email from Kyle where it was expressed that Kyle wants to stay on as General Manager of the Maple Leafs. Brendan said he slept on everything, woke up Friday morning, and drove to meet Kyle at his office at their practice facility. That is when Brendan told Kyle that he will not be receiving an offer to stay as General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
After this meeting, Brendan said that he called personnel and players in the organization to tell them about the decision of letting Dubas go at the end of his contract. This call reportedly did not go over well and also resulted in the Special Assistant to the General Manager Jason Spezza tendering his resignation immediately. Apparently one of the sticking points was Kyle Dubas was tired of having to go to Shanahan to get permission to do anymore and he wanted to be equal to Brendan and did not want to have to report any possible decision to him to relay to the Board of Directors and wanted to report directly to them himself. This would all but mean Shanahan would be effectively signing his own resignation letter as there would be plenty of other more qualified candidates to to President of the Business end and not hockey end,
Kyle Dubas did not respond to anything until yesterday when he released the following statement from his personal twitter account <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>onward. <a href=”https://t.co/kHlCfe8Q0a”>pic.twitter.com/kHlCfe8Q0a</a></p>— Kyle Dubas (@kyledubas) <a href=”https://twitter.com/kyledubas/status/1661013565086793732?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 23, 2023</a></blockquote> https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Now the question is where do the Maple Leafs go from here? There is 5 weeks from today, May 24, until the NHL draft in Nashville on June 28 and 29th and then free agentsy on July 1. In those 5 weeks they have to decide on who they are going to draft, make decisons on key player decisions as Auston Matthews and Mitch MArner have full no move clauses starting July 1 and William Nylander has a 10 team no trade list starting on July 1. Auston Matthews and William Nylander are also eligable for contract extensions on July 1. The Maple Leafs also have to make decisions on Restricted Free Agents Ilya Samsonov, Victor Mete, Pontus Holmberg, Nick Abruzzese, Semyon Der-Arguchintsev, Mac Hollowell, Filip Kral and also their Unrestricted free agents including Noel, Acciari, Ryan O’Reilly, Michael Bunting, David Kampf ect.
https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/mapleleafs
Who will be the guy who makes these decisions? This is something that needs to be figured out ASAP as time is running out on decisions and other teams are doing their interviews and hiring new GMs like Calgary did yesterday with Craig Conroy being named their new General Manager. We will take a look at some names but of the names being floated around I will already eliminate a few like Stan Bowman, MLSE is big on their public image, and with everything involving him and the Kyle Beech situation they will not touch him with a 1000 foot pole. Also, Marc Bergevin would be another one I will eliminate because of his track record as a GM, look at how he left Montreal and the situation they are in and just now starting to come out of it and also he was the director of player personnel in Chicago at the time of the Kyle Beech situation as well so that rules him out too. Brendan Shanahan said that he “Ideal” candidate would be someone with experience as a general manager in the NHL but did not specify that he would not consider people who are currently Assistant General Managers in the NHl as they are usually the ones who do the majority of the work.
Eric Tulsky: Eric is currently the AGM for the Carolina Hurricanes. Eric is also an analytics guy and his current role with the Hurricanes includes direct involvement in all hockey-related decisions, analytics, scouting, and contract negotiations. He is a key guy in Carolina’s decision making and the team the team is currently in the Eastern Conference finals and has been a powerhouse in the NHL the past few seasons. He was reportedly in the running to become the GM in Pittsburgh but has been apparently told that he is no longer in the running there,
Brandon Pridham: Brandon is currently one of the AGMs of the Maple Leafs and currently acting as intirm GM. Pridham has been employed by the Maple Leafs since 2015 and previous to that he worked for the NHL and helped write some of the NHL CBA and was the salary cap enforcer for the league and made sure every team was salary cap compliant. He was reportedly in the running to become the GM in Calgary before their announcement yesterday.
Mathieu Darche: Mathieu is currently the Director of Hockey Operations of the Tampa Bay Lightning and we all know their recent history of success. He assists in all aspect of player personnel decision, analytics, player development, contract negotiations, budgeting, scheduling and cap tracking according to the team website bio page. He has been interviewed and in the running to be GM of numerous teams recently including Montreal and Chicago.
Brad Treliving: Brad is the former General Manager of the Calgary Flames where he resigned on April 17, 2023. As the general manager of Calgary, the Flames did not really do too much with only 1 appearance in the second round of the NHL Playoffs, sound familiar? He is not afraid of making big moves as we saw last offseason when he traded Matthew Tkachuk to Florida in a blockbuster trade that brought Mackenzie Weegar and Jonathan Huberdeau to Calgary and then signed Jonathan to an 8-year $84 Million extension. In Calgary, at the end, it seemed like it was either he or coach Daryl Sutter would be gone and he was the first to go after reportedly being told that ownership wants to keep Darryl as a coach, but Darryl was fired on May 1 after management did exit interviews with their players and receive other feedback. Brad Treliving seems like an ideal candidate as he seems to do what pleases Ownership.
Doug Armstrong: Doug Armstrong is the current General Manager of the St. Louis Blues. I am going to prefix this by saying this is an absolute long shot as Doug currently has a deal that keeps him GM in St. Louis until the end of the 2025-2026 season. It was reported that he has an out clause but that is apparently not the case. It does seem though that he has the kind of relationship with the ownership that if he asked to be let go they would agree to it. Doug Armstrong has a recent history that includes winning the 2019 Stanley Cup in St. Louis and he was also the GM of Team Canada for the 2022 Winter Olympics until the NHL decided to not attend the Olympics. Doug would be the most logical replacement if he was available but that does not seem to be the case currently.
Other names include people like John Chayka, former General Manager of the Arizona Coyotes, Mike Gillis, former General Manager of the Vancouver Canucks and Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser who is currently an AGM with the Toronto Maple Leafs. John and Mike don’t really make any sense to be in Toronto and as much as I would love to see Hayley be the GM of the Maple Leafs, I don’t believe she will put up with having to answer to President Brendan Shanahan and get his permission before making any decisions.
NO matter who they choose as the General Manager of the Maple Leafs they will have to repot directly to President Brendan Shanahan and he would have to sign off on any hockey-related decision they have. So it doesn’t matter who is named the General Manager as this is clearly Brendan’s team and his vision is what will happen.
With that being said I hope that Brandon Pridham is the next General Manager of the Maple Leafs. He makes the most logistical sense in the fact that he has been there since 2015 and has a relationship with the current players and their agents. Other teams clearly think highly of him as he is always in consideration for other GM jobs when they become available. What I think will happen is that Bread Treliving will be named the General Manager very shortly. He was apparently one of if not the first people they called and he is supposed to be in Toronto at somepoint either later this week or ealry next week for the formal inperson interview.
It will be interesting to see who and when they name General Manager but hopefully its sooner rather than later.
I also think that MLSE will regret the decision to let Kyle Dubas go as I believe he will be hired by another rival team, possibly his favorite team growing up Ottawa Senators, and will win a Stanley Cup shortly too. It is very frustrating as a Maple Leafs fan to see that the Board of Directors is making this team go back instead of forward. The team needs to move on from one or more of the Core 4 players and it is believed and reported by Chris Johnston on his podcast The Chris Johnston Show on the SDPN that when Brendan Shanahan called the players their belief is that he intends on keeping all members of the Core 4 players.<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>How did the Leafs’ stars react to Kyle Dubas’ departure? <a href=”https://twitter.com/reporterchris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@reporterchris</a> has the full story<br><br>📺: <a href=”https://t.co/cNKsYqzrSo”>https://t.co/cNKsYqzrSo</a><br>🎙️: <a href=”https://t.co/CZOb7D4sUf”>https://t.co/CZOb7D4sUf</a> <br><br>Powered by Sports Interaction <a href=”https://twitter.com/SIASport?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@SIASport</a> <a href=”https://t.co/430iF3NYA4″>pic.twitter.com/430iF3NYA4</a></p>— sdpn (@sdpnsports) <a href=”https://twitter.com/sdpnsports/status/1661043926801821698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 23, 2023</a></blockquote> https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The next few weeks will be intering for sure in MLSE and hopefully there is a resolution shortly on all decisions.
ScortonBoy17.ca 
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