It turns out that Kyle Dubas still has plenty of things to say about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The former Leafs general manager was a guest on an episode of the Cam and Strick podcast with NHL insider Andy Strickland and former NHLer Cam Janssen released on Tuesday.

One of the key talking points of the interview was former Leafs star Mitch Marner, who left the organization in a sign-and-trade deal with the Vegas Golden Knights earlier this summer.

Dubas was asked if he thinks that Marner will benefit from a fresh start on a new team.

“I think that’s the easy narrative, perhaps. Awesome person, wonderful player, just started his own family. I hope it works out well for everybody. I hope that it can galvanize the team, and I hope that Mitch plays well in Vegas,” Dubas said.

“I think we’ll look back on it [in] a number of years and have a better view of it. But I’ll cheer for him and cheer for the rest of those guys [on the Leafs] to finally find their way through.”

Marner had spent his whole career with the Leafs since being taken fourth overall in the 2015 draft, Dubas’s first with the team as an assistant general manager. Marner put up a career-high 102 points in the regular season this past year before following that up with 13 points in 13 playoff games.

Dubas also offered his opinion on a story about former Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who made then-rookie Marner rank his teammates based on their work ethic during the 2016-17 team. Unbeknownst to a young Marner, Babcock later revealed the list to some of his teammates in a widely panned move.

“[Former Leafs GM] Lou [Lamoriello] handled it with Mike. And the fact that it never was a topic again until literally the few days after Mike was fired in 2019, I think speaks to Lou’s ability to handle everything. So it never came up again in my time there,” Dubas said.

The story was broken by Terry Koshan of the Toronto Sun in the days following Babcock’s firing, and Dubas claimed that he had no knowledge of the situation before reading it in the newspaper.

“When I read the story, I remember [talking to Leafs exec] Brandon Pridham. We didn’t know that it had happened.”

Marner also confirmed the story in 2019.

“It was just surprising,” Marner told reporters at the time. “It’s so long ago now. Honestly, I really kind of forgot about it until the report came out. It’s over with now. It’s done with. I was lucky enough that the guys that were there with me, none of them took it to heart. They knew it wasn’t up to me.”

Dubas also gave an overarching review of Babcock’s time in Toronto, where he made the playoffs three times in four full seasons with the team after finishing last in the NHL in his first year.

“Maybe people don’t want to give the credit to him, you know, in retrospect, but he

brought in a tremendous amount of accountability, a tremendous amount of detail and his work ethic and what he was willing to put in to be prepared was, you know, unlike anything… I still haven’t seen anything quite like it.”

Dubas eventually fired Babcock in November 2019, with the team having gotten off to a 9-10-4 start in his fifth year with the Leafs.

“It just became clear that the group wasn’t going to take the next steps with him,” Dubas admitted.

What has Babcock been up to since leaving the Leafs?

Babcock held volunteer roles with the University of Vermont as an assistant and the University of Saskatchewan as a head coach before attempting to get back to the NHL.

He was briefly hired by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2023 as their head coach, but eventually resigned before ever coaching a game, after a report came out via former NHLer Paul Bissonnette about Babcock’s mind games with his new club.

According to Bissonnette via the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast, Babcock was reportedly trying to gauge his players’ character by asking to see their photos on their phones.

“I get a text from a player. He goes, ‘Have you heard what Babcock is up to again?’ And I’m like, ‘No,'” Bissonnette told his co-host, Ryan Whitney, on Spittin’ Chiclets. “He gets to Columbus; he calls in Boone Jenner, the captain of the f***ing team, and says, ‘I want to see the photos in your phone. I wanna know the type of person you are.'”

Though Babcock initially called Bissonnette’s comments a “gross misrepresentation,” he eventually resigned from the role and has not coached since.

Lead photo by

Hockey Canada|Maple Leafs