i will always be a dubas truther

25 comments
  1. Dubas was a good GM.

    We’ve had arguably 3 good GM’s in 50 years. Grandpa Cliff back when he was under 200 years old, Quinn and Dubas.

  2. If he had drafted better I think his record would look a lot better but he’s certainly been our best GM in a few decades…..the bar is extremely low though

  3. The guy who let Hyman and McCann walk? The guy who traded Kadri away cheaply?

    Dubas was an awful GM.

  4. I’m too young to really remember the Gilmour and Clark years that well, so I’d say Dubas crafted the most entertaining teams to watch during my life as a Leafs fan. They didnt have the plyoff success of the early 2000s teams, but the high offence and speed made the team exciting. Shame they just couldn’t get a solid D group to support the goalies. Time heals all wounds and I will remember the peak of the core 4 fondly even if they couldn’t pull it off.

  5. This guy’s whole tenure was built on the back of 3 specific players he inherited. He traded too many draft picks to conceal some really poor free agent decisions. Was too generous with his NMCs. I agree we could do worse – but Dubas warrants more of the blame than a lot of others. 

  6. I think the biggest knock against Dubas will be the contracts he gave to Matthews and Marner coming out of their rookie deals. I thought he did pretty well with trades and signings outside of those two. You could argue (as I do in hindsight) that signing Tavares was a misstep but you also don’t have the chance to sign a 1C in FA. . . Ever.

    I would love to know just how many of the moves were actually Dubas considering how involved Shanahan was. Will be an interesting read when someone writes a book in 30 years.

  7. I’m sorry but I refuse to believe he was that good. Sure he was good, but he had some head scratchers too. At the end of the day, he gave our top players too much money before winning anything. This caused us to have to cut corners everywhere else and find “discounts”.

    Also trading a first with Marleau, Mrazek, and the Foligno trade were all horrible moves. Other than Knies, Hildeby, and Robertson we don’t have much in terms of prospects from his era as a GM.

  8. Dubas was a mixed bag, he tried new things and some were good some were awful. 

    He used the huge wallets of MLSE to beef up our staffing and personnel off the ice which was long overdue.

    He was a terrible negotiator for contracts and trades. He mortgaged the future to win now, for a team that couldn’t win 1 round, let alone 4. His hubris was his downfall, as is often the case, we can and we will. Plus he always came off like he thought he was the smartest guy in the room.

    Overall, not a fan of his and he set the precedent for the team during their decade of regular season success and postseason failures.

  9. I was honestly excited when Dubas basically said it was time to trade marner before his NTC kicked in, imagine the haul we actually could have gotten for marner with no trade restrictions and the team we trade him too gets him for 2 years (not a rental) but instead Shana fired him to try and keep his job which left a cluster fuck on the main office with tre getting here a week before the draft, effectively ruining the real chance to trade Mitch

  10. At the end of the day, the roster was good enough to go further in the playoffs. We just have a group of guys that can’t seem to get up for big games. Choke artists, if you will.

  11. Hard to known when the GM can’t do GM things. We only here about the good trades shanny blocked.

  12. Dubas did a great job for what the league was supposed to do at the time.

    The NHL was talking about cleaning up the game, calling more penalties and making the game based around the stars that were skilled.

    Dubas was young and naive. Now he understands.

  13. I get it, but we had to (and still have to) try something different. Shanahan was the real problem in the 2nd half of his tenure.

  14. Dubas and his horrible contracts will haunt the team for many years. He’s the Harold Ballard of our generation

  15. It’s been a wild ride. The moment Tre got hired I got the sensation that we might slip back into being a rudderless organization with corporate types clawing back control. It was just too safe/conventional. Kyle made many mistakes , especially at the negotiations table. It’s just a fact. But he had vision and passion.

    The craziest part is that the organization kept Marner, and didn’t make such a catastrophic mess of the deadline last year, there’s a different timeline where the group could make the playoffs and had a chance at their best path yet.

    That being said , “ifs and buts” and hypotheticals are a pretty pointless exercise. The core still has shown us that they’re incapable of performing at the biggest moments. We’d possibly at least have a more full cupboard, and a more compelling on-ice product this year, but it’d ultimately be the same core that has been proven to fold when the chips are down .

  16. Dubas was horrible. He pissed off Willy, handed out a very hindering NMC to Marner, traded first round picks for guys like Nick Foligno, failed to address the D long term outside of Muzzin (and then failed to fix that when he got hurt), couldn’t draft outside the top 10 (even with his coveted independence) and wanted to trade Willy over Marner.

    Inheriting Sidney Crosby and a bunch of draft capital, playing in a weak division, and a 50-odd game sample size are NOT indicative of long term success or ability at all.

    Tre has his faults (for the love of god what was that Carlo trade) but at least he saw who was productive and what our weaknesses are. He’s bad at identifying solutions but at least he can identify the problems. And I just want to say, he gets unfair treatment for the Tkachuk trade. Getting a 115 point player, a top 4 (top pair imo) D, and a draft pick back for a guy who wanted out to one destination only is a HAUL. It’s not his fault Huberdeau is lazy fuck (seriously, one of the most entertaining and frustrating players to watch live)

    This is just revisionist history and needs to stop. Let Penguins fans think they hit the jackpot. When they actually commit to a rebuild, they’ll see.

    We are fucked because of everyone. Shanahan, Lou, Babcock, Dubas, Keefe, Pelly, Tre, Berube, everyone involved made bad decisions. We destroyed the culture of the team and the room’s trust in itself. And Rogers doesn’t give a fuck to fix it beyond making money. They don’t care about us being a prestigous team.

    “Honour Pride Courage” my fucking ass

  17. Fuck no. He got us into this mess. Marleau trade, Hyman situation, the contracts, etc. He also handled his contract negotiation horribly. Brad has been terrible but Dubas was not the wunderkind he was let on to be, in my opinion.

  18. The hard part for me is how do you evaluate a guy who became GM when the Leafs finally had young elite talent, but was also apparently handcuffed by Shanahan?

  19. Dubas fucked the RFA signings of the core and he’s also part of the reason leafs future/prospects is cooked

  20. Problem was timing with Dubas. If we got him now things would go better than when he way young and inexperienced.

    I’ll forever wonder what would have happened if we kept Lou around especially for the core’s contract negotiations.

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