SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS

Kyle Dubas moves up as Leafs GM, Dwane Casey is out as Raptors coach,

Kyle Dubas looks young, because he is. The 32-year-old’s eyes can get hidden behind his thick-framed, sharp-couture glasses, but he’s no nerd. On Friday, the Toronto Maple Leafs named Dubas the 17th general manager in franchise history. Welcome to a future. “I was under no pressure from anyone to do this,” said team president Brendan Shanahan. “I was under no obligation to do this. I just really felt, looking at Kyle, he was more than ready and it was the right time.”

Dubas has been a potential successor to Lou Lamoriello since before Lamoriello was hired. Shanahan was looking for bright hockey minds and somebody mentioned Dubas’s name, since he was three years into the job as general manager of his hometown Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. Dubas was about to get married, and thought the call was a groomsman’s prank. The meeting was supposed to go a couple hours. It went nine. Shanahan was blown away.

And after three years as an assistant general manager and four years in the NHL, Dubas has one of the most prestigious, onerous, responsibility-freighted jobs in all of hockey.

“I’m not the type of person that would rush into this just because it’s a GM job,” said Dubas, whose infant son Leo fussed at the press conference and had to be carried from the room. “I feel it’s the right moment in time for me here, and I feel that way largely because of the people who are here and our systems that are in place, and my experience in being able to work with Lou.”

Dubas arrives as a collision between hockey’s past and its future, and its twin poles of thought.

“I feel it’s the right moment in time for me here.” KYLE DUBAS

His grandfather coached the Greyhounds in the ’60s; Dubas scouted for them at 17, while at university. He was the youngest agent on record, and was the Soo’s GM at 25. And then came embracing analytics, for a team that wasn’t as deeppocketed as many of its rivals.

And like that, for some, Dubas became seen as an analytics zealot. Sure.

“I think the two polarizing portions of the fight have taken me and tried to pull and say, this is what he is, or this is what he is,” said Dubas. “And the reality is I grew up in hockey, working in hockey every day— scouting, player development.”

“I liked that he thought about the game in a lot of different ways,” said Shanahan, who has always been one of the brightest, most iconoclastic minds in hockey. “People make a big deal of the two sides of hockey — whether it’s old-school or analytics — and I sort of don’t have any time for the argument of one or the other, because most of the smart people I meet in hockey meet in the middle and have a great blend and respect for both.

“So I think what struck me immediately was Kyle’s easy navigation of somebody that really valued objective information, but also had a great knowledge of everyone playing the game and obviously was someone, if you talked to him and looked at his background, is a rink rat. We describe certain people: boots in the rink.”

Either way, calling Dubas a Hockey Man or a Computer Boy misses the net. Dubas delved into analytics because he didn’t trust his own ability — or anybody’s — to watch the game and understand every part, every pattern. He tried to find a better way to make decisions.

And in the OHL, and in hockey, that was enough to be ahead of the curve.

Dubas searches out ideas outside of hockey that he can steal, and believes players should be able to express a little more personality than hockey tends to allow. It’s a low bar to be considered a bit of a heretic in this game.

So is he ready? Hockey is an old-school business, and while he earned some respect from Lamoriello after a difficult start to their relationship, that doesn’t mean he’s ready. The league is full of complications, of old-boy networks, of nepotism and tradition, and even the wooden-wheeled franchises have analytics departments now. Nobody thinks Lou is sticking around to be a franchise babysitter, and draft guru and assistant GM Mark Hunter, who had a far more extensive resume than Dubas in the OHL and elsewhere, is believed to be rather upset he did not get the job. It’s Dubas’s job to keep him, apparently.

“As with every staff member, we’ll go through that whole process,” said Dubas.

“That’s obviously my hope, that the team moves ahead as it has.”

Also, coach Mike Babcock is a handful, a force of nature, who loves his Leo Komarovs and his Roman Polaks. If Dubas is not ready, we’ll find out fast. William Nylander needs a contract; Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner will eventually, too. The Leafs have weaknesses and acres of one-year cap space. It will require creativity.

And all that’s riding on Dubas as a 32-year-old first-time general manager who may or may not have been sufficiently mentored by a notoriously controlling GM is a franchise that expects to contend for a Stanley Cup in the short term and beyond. So, will creativity and a bright mind be enough? When extolling Dubas, Shanahan said of his service in Toronto, “no job was too big and no job was too small.” We will find out if this job is one or the other, or something in between.