GM haunted by predecessor’s errors
Treliving is handcuffed at trade deadline by Tavares contract, lack of prospects and picks
In golf, there’s always a chance your friends will let you take a mulligan if you shank one off the tee. It’s really a shame NHL general managers don’t get the same courtesy when making trades.
Certainly Kyle Dubas could have used a few. Even if it wouldn’t have saved the former Maple Leafs GM his job and earned him the autonomy he was desperately seeking last off-season, it would have left his replacement, Brad Treliving, more cards to play going into Friday’s NHL trade deadline.
Leafs fans have been on quite the transaction ride since Brendan Shanahan took over as president in 2014. Four GMs — five if you include Mark Hunter’s brief stint as co-interim GM — in the last10 years have had a crack at shaping the Leafs roster, but no one has had a bigger impact than Dubas.
Before Dubas became the 17th GM in Leafs history, Shanahan’s first few years as president played out as expected. He was there when Dave Nonis dumped key veterans like Cody Franson and Daniel Winnik for significant picks in 2015. Then, with Lou Lamoriello at the helm in 2016, the first significant addition was made to the Shanaplan by trading first- and secondround picks for 27-year-old goalie Frederik Andersen, a move that helped them get back in the playoffs in 2017.
But things took a turn for the worse the day Shanahan put all his faith in Dubas.
I don’t claim to know Shanahan well but I know this: Even if I live to be 120 years old, I’ll still never understand his decision to hire an inexperienced GM at such a crucial time in the franchise’s history.
I take no pleasure in revisiting Dubas’s run as GM of the Leafs; I believe it’s generally better to let bygones be bygones. But moving on is hard to do when you think of the mountains that need to be moved by Friday afternoon for the Leafs to fill significant holes on the roster that Dubas, now leading the Pittsburgh Penguins, left behind.
If you’re a Leafs fan and this trade deadline leaves you disappointed, you’ll know why.
We can dissect the many transactions of any GM in pro sports and find winners and losers. But a GM has to avoid the move that leaves the team handcuffed for years to come. Dubas made at least three of those regrettable decisions.
Let’s start with the signing of John Tavares in 2018. Not only did giving Tavares $11 million (U.S.) per season set the tone and force the Leafs to overpay its young stars for years to come, it also put the writing on the wall for Nazem Kadri.
While Kadri was far from the model citizen, the decision to move on from him in 2019 was perplexing with the value he provided at a $4.5million annual salary. There was some frustration over Kadri not keeping his emotions in check but, instead of trying to develop that part of his game, Dubas gave him away for average players in Alex Kerfoot and Tyson Barrie, who Dubas had pegged as a top-three defenceman. Clearly he was not that.
When Tavares was signed for seven years, it bumped Kadri down the depth chart and made him an asset Dubas felt was expendable.
That catastrophic mistake started a domino effect of the Leafs losing valuable assets for nothing simply to become salary-cap compliant. Dubas had to trade a first-round pick to unload veteran forward Patrick Marleau’s $6.25-million salary in 2019 and had to do it again with goaltender Petr Mrazek’s $3.8 million in 2022.
It also forced him to move on from Zach Hyman, who Dubas somehow felt wasn’t worth his $5-million asking price. Hyman, of course, has 42 goals in 59 games in his third season with the Oilers after scoring 36 last year. It’s crazy to think of where the Leafs would be if Dubas was more creative and found the money to pay him.
Then there was the depletion of assets from trading for unrestricted free agents. At the deadline in 2021 he dealt a first-round pick and two fourths for a 33-year-old Nick Foligno, and I’m still not sure why. Foligno had seven goals in 42 games with the Blue Jackets at the time of the trade, and never scored one in Toronto.
Even if Foligno had stayed healthy for the Leafs — he played just seven regular-season and four playoff games — a blue line led by Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin, Justin Holl and T.J. Brodie should have signalled that the Leafs weren’t ready to go all-in on a winger well past his prime.
In 2023, Dubas doubled down on his bold-but-unsuccessful tradedeadline track record by acquiring Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari. Once again, it wasn’t cheap, costing first-, second- and third-round picks plus two prospects.
O’Reilly contributed more than Foligno did and could have been worth the steep cost had he stuck around, but Dubas didn’t get any assurances the Toronto-born centre would re-sign. When O’Reilly chose to join Nashville, he became another expensive rental.
In his last three seasons in Toronto, Dubas sent three first-round picks, five seconds, four thirds, three fourths and one fifth out the door with one first-rounder, two thirds and two fifths coming back.
Some GMs wouldn’t survive one major blunder. Dubas managed to get away with three. Do you think Treliving could have used one of those lost draft picks last week to land defenceman Chris Tanev before Dallas did?
The truth is, Treliving is heading into this week’s trade deadline gunfight with nothing but a pocket knife.
We can split hairs over any GM’s decisions — and it gets easier with the benefit of hindsight — but to be heading into the 2024 trade deadline and without first-, second-, third- and fourth-round picks in the 2025 NHL draft and with just one playoff round win to show for it is downright negligent.
If you think it’s frustrating, imagine being Treliving trying to fix these mistakes. He’s trying to win a chess game with a bunch of missing pieces, and time is running out to make a move.