Dubas all in for long Cup run
General manager says this might be the year to add a rental player
Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas is in the market for a forward, he would like to make a trade sooner rather than later, he would take a rental player, and he’d trade a top prospect to make it all happen.
It sounds like the Leafs are all in for a Stanley Cup run.
Dubas held a mid-season conference call Tuesday — the first time doing it with his team in first place in a division — and he sounded very much like a manager who has lofty, short-term goals on his mind.
“The standings, as they currently are, are probably a very fair indication of our overall quality in the first half of the season,” Dubas said in his opening remarks. “We're also under four weeks away from the trade deadline, and I think it's very clear that our team will explore every opportunity we can to improve.”
It won’t be easy. The NHL trade deadline is April 12. Trading with a Canadian team is unlikely, given teams don’t like to trade within the same division. And trading with an American team is problematic because of the 14-day quarantine. Players picked up at the deadline from U.S. teams won’t be able to play in Canada until the final two weeks of the regular season, perhaps six or seven games.
“The sooner we can get a player in here through the quarantine and then integrate them into our program, the better for them and for us,” Dubas said.
It likely will be a forward, with Dubas commenting that he’s happy enough with the team’s goaltending and defence while lamenting the losses of the likes of Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen. “I'm not precluding anything at this point but ... most of the conversations are focused on forwards right now,” Dubas said.
The Leafs have pieces they can move. Dubas had a succinct, one-word answer — “Yes” — to the question of whether he would be willing to trade a top prospect at the deadline to get what he wants. That moved prospects like Rasmus Sandin, Nick Robertson, Timothy Liljegren and Rodion Amirov to the top of trade lists everywhere.
Then there’s the salary cap gymnastics that will be required. Things are so tight now, the Leafs put Jimmy Vesey on waivers to create the cap room for Wayne Simmonds to return from long-term injured reserve. They risk losing Vesey for nothing by noon Wednesday.
So adding a player via trade into that mix is a whole other issue. Dubas has typically traded for players with term left on their deals, like Jake Muzzin, or who are up for a quick re-sign, like Jack Campbell. But a flat cap — for the foreseeable future — and the Seattle Kraken expansion draft make this a rare year in which Dubas might prefer a rental player. One under contract might upset both the team’s salary cap balance into next year, and might require a different mix of players to be protected in the expansion draft. Or the player with term left might end up being a rental, if he is chosen by the Kraken in the expansion draft
“It's a little bit more complex this year,” Dubas said. “It's a rare time where probably a rental is a better fit. That said, if it's something that we feel can improve our team long term, we'll find a way to make it work.”
Dubas’s tone wasn’t self-congratulatory. His way of building a roster — through speed and skill and the lens of analytics at the cost of brawn — has been criticized since he took over. And he has taken no “I told you so” tone with the Leafs leading the North Division. He acknowledges they haven’t won anything.
“I’m certainly not vindicated by good stretches in the regular season,” he said. “An entire regular season of having great results would be one thing, and then having that fuelling playoff success would be another. But the goal for the group is high performance sustained year after year.”
Dubas feels the team is on the right path, bolstered by his offseason acquisitions of Simmonds, Joe Thornton, Zach Bogosian and T.J. Brodie, who have changed the dynamic within the dressing room and won’t let the team “sag” after a loss.
Documenting all of this is a production crew for an Amazon series: “All or Nothing,” promising a behind-the-scenes look into the season. The title captures how this season feels, even if Dubas pushes back just a little on that topic.
“I don't know that the title of the series is really the be-all and end-all for where we're at as a team,” he said. “I know there's a lot of talk about we have to win a playoff round or bust, or winning the Stanley Cup or bust.”
He insists he’s not caught up in that particular view.
“It's about trying to build a program that can be a team that has a high level of performance every single year. That's really the goal from my end. My focus has to be on the long run and building a program that can reach our objective.”