TORONTO — Kyle Dubas didn’t reveal a lot about what’s next for the Maple Leafs, not exactly, but he sure left a lot of clues.
About the future of the core. About the future of the head coach. About the future direction of the franchise. He sure made it sound like change is coming, if he does in fact return. And if he doesn’t, well, then change is coming for certain.
That biggest outstanding question — Will he be back as GM? — remains unanswered after Monday’s season-ending press availability.
Dubas alluded to the “good, long relationship” he had with team president Brendan Shanahan and ownership and planned to speak to both parties in the coming days about his future (aka next contract). Before that, more crucially, a discussion with his wife Shannon to “see where we’re at as a family and how we want to proceed with everything.”
Dubas called it a “taxing” year on his family and was visibly emotional when the subject came up in a brief 15-minute press conference.
“My family is a hugely important part of what I do,” Dubas said. “We haven’t been able to have those full discussions yet. But it was a very hard year on them.”
Cross off the Pittsburgh Penguins and any other team that’s interested in Dubas’ services.
Dubas insisted it was Leafs or bust. “I definitely don’t have it in me to go anywhere else,” he said. “It’s either here or it’ll be taking time to recalibrate and reflect on the seasons here. But you won’t see me next week pop up elsewhere. I can’t put (my family) through that after this year.”
It’s not clear what exactly those issues are (the team declined to comment further), only that, clearly, they will play a big part in Dubas’ decision to return to the Leafs — or not. Being the GM of the Leafs is a huge commitment and Dubas makes it a point of traveling to just about every one of his team’s road games, unlike some of his peers around the league.
He’s looked and sounded a lot like someone burned out by the job in recent weeks.
You’d have to imagine that the combination of money, commitment, and power are part of his decision too, a big part. How much and for how long are the Leafs willing to extend his contract? How much commitment, in other words, are they willing to show? A brief commitment, and thus, a limited show of faith, and perhaps Dubas really does walk away. A long-term deal that secures his future with the team and maybe he stays.
The other thing is power.
Dubas may desire more autonomy than he’s got, what with Shanahan sitting just a rung higher on the depth chart as team president. It was certainly notable that Shanahan wasn’t there speaking alongside Dubas, as he had last spring.
The Leafs said only that Shanahan would address the media at a later date.
Now that’s almost certainly tied to Dubas’ uncertain future; it’s better to answer questions about the future of the organization when Dubas’ future is cleared up. But it also inevitably makes for the optics of division.
“I’m responsible,” Dubas said, when asked why Shanahan wasn’t there. “The decisions made on trades, on (the) roster, they’re on me, so I feel like I should sit and take responsibility for them. I don’t need anybody else to be up (here) and shield it with me.
“It’s on me.”
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but Alex Anthopoulos memorably left the Blue Jays when they brought in Mark Shapiro as his superior. Dubas has worked for Shanahan for the entirety of his Leafs’ tenure. However, he may be in search of a world with the Leafs in which he has full (or fuller) autonomy.
It’s only if he returns, obviously, that those clues he dropped about the future of the roster and coaching staff matter.
What were those clues? Start with the stars at the top of the roster — aka the core of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares.
This was Dubas two years ago after the Leafs were embarrassed by the Montreal Canadiens.
“I just really believe in all four of them as people,” Dubas said. “I have a deep belief in them, certainly their talent, which I think everybody sees and knows, but also in them as people, in particular how much playing here means to them and (what) winning here would mean to them.”
He left some gray after the seven-game loss to Tampa last year, noting that “if there’s a way that we can improve the team and become a better team, then we’ll do that.”
On this particular day, he was even, well, grayer, murky even, about what comes next for those atop the Leafs roster.
Asked about his confidence in that core, Dubas said that “perhaps the path needs to shift slightly and needs to be adapted slightly” and added, “You get in between persistence and full belief versus being a little too staunch and rigid.”
Which, reading between the lines, sounded a lot like “full belief” in the past may have left the franchise a “little too staunch and rigid” in their commitment to those very stars.
More telling was Dubas pointing directly to the team that just beat his own in the second round, the Florida Panthers, and their willingness to trade two core players, Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar, for rising star, Matthew Tkachuk.
That, too, came after a disappointing postseason.
Dubas even described it as a “template” for the way in which the Leafs might go about something similar, by which he meant taking their time with such a monumental decision and executing it properly.
The Panthers, he noted, made that franchise-upending trade in late July.
“That’s a big move,” Dubas said. “But I don’t think it was hastily done.”
He added more tellingly: “I would consider anything with our group here that would allow us a better chance to win the Stanley Cup. So I would take nothing off the table at all. And I think everything would have to be considered with regards to anything to do with the Leafs.”
Which sounds a lot like a team led by Dubas will explore a “big move” like that more vigorously than they might have in the past. Nothing is off the table at all.
It’s hard to see a world in which all four stars return.
Tavares, not surprisingly, didn’t sound the least bit interested in waiving his no-movement clause when asked on Monday morning. Marner and Nylander both stressed that they too would like to be back.
Dubas or not, the Leafs figure to explore the market for all three and try to come up with a trade that somehow subtracts a star player (or two even) and makes them better, or, at the very least, different. Can they pull off a Tkachuk-like execution is the question.
The one star they (presumably) won’t be exploring the market for is Matthews, who reiterated his commitment to Toronto and “intention” to stay. He spoke highly of Dubas when asked. Until Matthews’ contract extension is signed, which can take place as soon as July 1, nothing is certain obviously. But even short of a deal before next season, Matthews won’t be going anywhere.
Speaking of his own disappointment with the stars, Dubas pointed to the lack of offence that they and his team produced as the playoffs unfolded — two goals apiece in the final two games of the first round against the Lightning, and two goals in each of the five games against the Panthers.
Matthews and Tavares both failed to score in the second round. Marner nabbed only one while Nylander netted two.
“We have to find a way to convert on those chances,” Dubas said. “And we have to find a way to build in different offensive principles that can allow us to produce more at those key moments.”
That last part obviously gets to coaching.
Dubas has only ever hired Sheldon Keefe as his head coach (in the OHL, AHL, and NHL) and while he went out of his way to praise Keefe’s adjustments in that second-round series, he also wouldn’t commit to Keefe’s return.
How could he, really, with his own future uncertain? How could he with ownership’s stance on the subject still presumably TBD?
“There still, to me, has to be a full evaluation of everything, and a full and conclusive answer on that, I think, to do so right now would be too hasty,” Dubas said of Keefe’s return.
That, again, is different from the way things went in the past. Last spring, Shanahan made it clear straight off the top of his and Dubas’ end-of-season availability that Dubas and Keefe would both be back.
This year, times are different. Clearly.
And yet, what was also unmistakable, jarring, and even a little alarming, was how routine it all felt on the players’ side of things. What’s said publicly doesn’t mean much in the end, and things were presumably different in exit meetings behind closed doors, but there was a surprising lack of fire, anger, or even individual accountability on why it had all gone wrong — again — for the Leafs.
Ryan O’Reilly was really the only one who spoke about how he personally had fallen short. “I don’t think I created enough out there,” he said.
Otherwise, it felt a little too much like past playoff failures. Of breaks not going the right way. Of growth from a season that saw the team own the regular season but win just a single playoff round. What it seemed to speak to is a group that needs real change, finally, a meaningful shakeup to break up the status quo.
With Dubas, or without him, change appears to be coming to the Leafs.
(Top photo: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiSWh0dHBzOi8vdGhlYXRobGV0aWMuY29tLzQ1MjIzMjUvMjAyMy8wNS8xNS9reWxlLWR1YmFzLW1hcGxlLWxlYWZzLWZ1dHVyZS_SAU9odHRwczovL3RoZWF0aGxldGljLmNvbS80NTIyMzI1LzIwMjMvMDUvMTUva3lsZS1kdWJhcy1tYXBsZS1sZWFmcy1mdXR1cmUvP2FtcD0x?oc=5
2023-05-16 19:59:09Z
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