Leafs’ future in good hands
Grooming Dubas to fill Lou’s shoes should pay off soon
When Lou Lamoriello was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs after a lifetime as the godfather of the New Jersey Devils — where he became a league powerhouse behind the scenes despite working for a team that played between highways and off-ramps, next to a swamp — one NHL lifer put it this way: Lou doesn’t just know where the bodies are buried, he may have dug some graves.
On Monday, Brendan Shanahan sent Lou to a better place, in the parlance of the afterlife. Their agreement was always built along this timeline: a threeyear contract as the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and then a graceful transition to a senior adviser position. The GM job would then go to either assistant general manager Kyle Dubas or assistant general manager and scouting guru Mark Hunter. That was Shanahan’s plan, right from the start.
He stuck with it, and it required ending the GM career of the man who drafted Shanahan when he was 18, who caught Shanahan when he snuck out to his high school dance while back in town with the Devils. Lou, of course, found out. But Shanahan is loyal, above all, to the Leafs.
“Well, you know, I can’t get into my thought process with you,” said Shanahan on a conference call with Lamoriello. “Just simply, Lou and I, when he first met and discussed this challenge, we talked about a timetable. And I guess I came to the conclusion that that was the right timetable, and it was time to make a change.”
Which means the future starts now. Shanahan claimed not to have decided on the next GM; he went so far as to say that he had not even decided whether there would be outside candidates.
But it’s going to be Dubas, or it’s going to be a shock. The analytically-fluent Dubas was identified as a star by Shanahan the first time they met, and the Leafs blocked him from the Colorado job last year. He is just 31, and it was not believed that he and Lamoriello had much in the way of chemistry. But Dubas has overseen the team’s analytics and the AHL Marlies, who have been wildly successful at producing both wins and NHL players. If Lou wasn’t grooming Dubas, Shanahan likely was.
And he is the kind of creative thinker who should be the future of hockey. Lamoriello turns 76 in October, but is not the type to gracefully accept a job in the back seat as a wise but impotent elder.
On the call Lamoriello said they had just had the conversation that morning, and he had no thoughts for his future yet, so it must have been at least somewhat of a surprise. He put a happy enough face on it, saying he would honour his contract.
The bet here is that contract allows him to leave, if the right door opens.
“He never got in the way of what I had to do in the position that he asked me to come here (for),” said Lamoriello. “And that’s all that you can ask. As far as our personal relationship, that doesn’t change.” For Dubas — assuming no late-breaking twists — it will be a massive challenge, and responsibility, and opportunity. This franchise has the elements of greatness, but it faces several franchise-shaping decisions. William Nylander needs a contract by September; Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner can — and maybe will — wait a year, but Matthews will be one of the highest-paid players in hockey, and Marner may not be so far behind. Sala- ry structure isn’t destiny in the NHL, but it’s a part of it.
And then there is building a championship team. There will need to be a plan for the team’s short-term salary-cap space next season. There will be the political challenges of dealing with a bull-willed coach who loves his Leo Komarovs and Roman Polaks, and has traditionally not been shy about using his status to push for what he wants. There are those who believe Hunter may leave, too. That would require a rebuild and the draft, in the NHL, is life.
Lamoriello was brought in partly to give players the fear of god off the ice, while Mike Babcock provided the fear of god on it. Dubas is a more forward-thinking executive, and dealing with this generation of players will be its own challenge. He will need to build the relationships that a GM needs around the league; he will likely face the derision of those who believe in hockey’s essential conservatism. Creativity, in hockey, can be a dangerous word.
Dubas has been an advocate of speed and skill, for analytics blended with fresh thinking. It’s not that he’s some computer boy; he is a young hockey man whose grandfather was a coach, who has been a scout. But Shanahan instinctively grasped the concept of PDO, or the rhythms and ebbs of shooting percentage and save percentage, as a player; Dubas grasped it, among other things, as an executive. Shanahan clearly believes in Dubas: both are hockey men with curious minds and an expansive view of the world. In that way, they fit.
What is as clear as ever is this: Shanahan is in charge, and whatever he did was going to be a risk. He has clearly decided to bet on the future. What comes next, nobody really knows. But it has begun.