GM arrives with cash and options
DALLAS— In the days after Kyle Dubas arrived in the NHL, as an assistant general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs back in the summer of 2014, longer-tenured members of the hockey establishment were eager to come face to face with Brendan Shanahan’s handpicked whiz kid.
Fairly or unfairly, it wasn’t long before Dubas earned a reputation: He loved to talk more than he liked to listen. From the get-go, no matter the level of experience of the hockey men in the room, the shiny-haired kid from the Soo was not shy about contributing to the discourse as though he was sitting among equals. Some took it as youthful arrogance; others saw it as enviable gutsiness. But five years later, a little more than a month removed from being named general manager of one of the richest teams in the sport, it’s hard to argue with Dubas’s early-career success. His ability to confidently verbalize his hockey vision in a way that makes sense to Shanahan goes a long way toward explaining how he got here at age 32.
And on Thursday, when he stepped out of an NHL GMs meeting for the first time as the full-time holder of the gig, Dubas called the experience “an honour.”
“You look around and you see some of the best managers and personnel people in the history of the game. So it’s humbling,” he said. “And you realize, in my position, you still have a lot to learn and a lot to work towards.”
The prospect of finding out how much Dubas has left to learn, and precisely how he plans to go about running the Maple Leafs, is what makes the coming couple of weeks so potentially compelling. Beginning with Friday’s first round of the NHL draft, where the Maple Leafs hold the 25th overall pick, and into the free-agent courting and signing periods that follow, Dubas will begin offering his first public declarations of how he intends to transform the good team he’s inherited into a better one.
He’s certainly armed for the occasion. Dubas has assets, including a Calder Cup-winning minor-league affiliate stocked with talent and an NHL roster replete with blue-chip 20somethings. And Dubas, too, has options.
Something in the range of $24-million-plus U.S. in salarycap space for 2018-19, this before he gets around to signing William Nylander. It’s a one-off balloon number in the season before the second contracts of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner will presumably kick in, and it screams of opportunity.
“We have lots of cap space this summer. That’s always nice,” Dubas said. “Using it effectively is the next part of it, and that falls on me and our management team.”
There’s another wrinkle not usually attached to the storyline of a typical NHL off-season; Dubas is making his managerial debut at a moment when a handful of legitimate stars are possibly in play.
While hockey’s off-season has traditionally been a snorefest compared to the attentiongrabbing drama of star-swapping intrigue offered up by the NBA, there’s at least some hope that the coming weeks could be marginally different.
Not that there’ll be much suspense in the draft’s opening moments on Friday. It’s widely assumed Rasmus Dahlin, the Swedish defenceman with the jaw-dropping offensive skillset, will be the No. 1 overall pick, an honour that comes with a three-year rookie-scale sentence in Buffalo. Carolina is expected to select Russian winger Andrei Svechnikov with the No. 2 pick. From there, it gets less predictable; Dubas scoffed at the notion of prognosticating what might be available at No. 25.
Unpredictability, mind you, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not that the NHL is in danger of usurping another Summer of LeBron. But John Tavares, currently mulling his options after nine seasons with the New York Islanders, has the chance to be the big-fish free agent of the salary-cap era (although Thursday’s signing of head coach Barry Trotz, fresh off delivering a Stanley Cup to Washington, has only likely increased the odds that Tavares will re-sign with the only team he’s ever played for, as is the NHL way). Tavares’s addition to the Toronto lineup would be a short-term boon, even if it came attached to the long-term risk of taking on a 27-year-old centreman who’s never been an elite skater. Certainly it would announce Dubas as a seeker of a here-and-now championship.
It’s also assumed Erik Karlsson, the two-time Norris Trophy winner with a year remaining on his contract with the dysfunctional Ottawa Senators, is on the trade block. Karlsson — not to be confused with the impending free agent defenceman John Carlson, who’s likely to prove an overpriced commodity — is the kind of game-commanding talent for whose services a bold GM would happily cash in prime pieces. And to say the Senators look like vulnerable targets — on Thursday, GM Pierre Dorion announced to the world that Ottawa’s dressing room was “broken” in the lead-up to the Mike Hoffman trade — would be an understatement.
There are other all-star-calibre players to investigate. Artemi Panarin, the point-a-game winger, has expressed no interest in re-signing with the Blue Jackets and could be a target. Joe Thornton, pursued hard by the Leafs last summer in the recruiting push that scored longtime San Jose teammate Patrick Marleau, is a free agent again. And even if he’ll turn 39 on July 2, surely coach Mike Babcock would lobby hard to use a chunk of that cap space to lure Jumbo Joe. Toronto’s situation seems tailormade for a creative, front-loaded contract that could help entice such a player. As for the cap crunch that comes later? That’s how assistant GM Brandon Pridham, the resident capologist, earns his money.
Not that Dubas has to make a blockbuster move to show he’s on the correct track. Even with a handful of in-house free agents possibly on the way out, including veteran centreman Tyler Bozak and 36-goal winger James van Riemsdyk, a case can be made that internal patches from the Marlies pipeline are, in many cases, the preferred option. But the situation can change on a dime. TSN reported late Thursday that Marlies centreman Miro Aaltonen plans to return to the KHL next season. Considering Aaltonen was a favourite to be the Leafs’ fourth-line centre, it’s a development that will add another item to a rookie GM’s shopping list.
“(Aaltonen returning to the KHL will) increase our focus on (free agency) on July 1,” Dubas said.
Bargain hunting for fourthliners is one thing. The chance to snag an elite talent thanks to a well-planned surplus of cap room won’t be an every-year thing. How Dubas handles the opportunity could come to define his early tenure. We know he’s never been afraid to talk. We’ll find out soon if he can make noise.