The Maple Leafs shouldn’t fire Team President Shanahan or General Manager Dubas.
I hate to find myself defending the Toronto Maple Leafs and their legacy of failure but it’s important to live by your convictions and my conviction is that the Leafs are on the right track and built the right way. They’re not perfect or flawless but they’re as good as you can reasonably expect a team to be.
GMs do not play the game, they build the team that plays the game. This is a simple statement but it will go to serve as the distinction that allows us to adequately and properly analyze the performance of a GM as somewhat, not wholly, separate from the performance of the team.
The following discussion will not involve the Leafs’ Salary Cap situation.
It is generally accepted that the Leafs are not in “Cap Hell”, which is a term used to describe teams that have to dismantle themselves in order to remain compliant and eligible to compete.
The Leafs are not in notable Cap Trouble, so there is little need for it to be discussed below.
The argument is as follows:
The goal of a GM is to assemble a team that can win the Cup
Teams that win the Cup invariably have a strong core of 5-to-7 players who are relied on for the bulk of the success. Non-core and peripheral players come and go.
The Leafs’ core is enviable: Tavares, Matthews, Marner, Nylander, and Rielly. That is multiple players who get at least a Point-Per-Game (PPG) or more, one who is a the league’s best goal scorer, and Morgan Rielly, a highly productive dman himself.
In recent memory the only ‘perfect’ cores, on paper, were Tampa 2019-to-2021 and the first two Chicago Blackhawks Cup winnings teams in the early 2010s.
The Leafs are no worse than any other Cup winner since the 2005 lockout.
A corollary to Point 1: The other goal of a GM is to assemble a team that can have multiple attempts to win the Cup. That is to say: build a sustainable team that doesn’t fall apart quickly (see: Montreal Canadiens’ fluke Cup Run of 2021)
The Leafs have made the playoffs each of the last six seasons, with at least the four most recent playoff appearances coming with the expectations of making a long playoff run. We can call these four most recent playoff appearances, brief as they were, as Kicks at the Can.
Despite the flat salary cap and the difficulties of the Covid pandemic, and despite Toronto being one of the least attractive destinations for Free Agents (media, pressure, weather, taxes, Covid tyranny, etc.) the Leafs have assembled a core that can be kept together for at least two more seasons until Matthews becomes a free agent after the 2023-2024 season.
Either way you look at it and barring the Leafs missing the playoffs in the coming years, by the end of the 2024 season the Leafs will have had 6+2 or 4+2 Kicks at the Can. That’s a remarkably long window despite the playoffs runs, so far, being remarkably short.
Dubas and his predecessors assembled a core that they plan to keep together until 2024, they should remain in place until the end of the 2022-2023 season.
If there is scant evidence of success, then the organization can then, at that point, choose what direction they want to take with the final year of Auston Matthews.
That the Leafs have not surpassed the first round hump is a remarkably and statistically strange fact, but it should not distract frustrated fans when they’re analyzing how the GM has assembled and kept together the core elements of the team. Despite the Salary Cap plateauing just as the Leafs hit their stride, they are not in Cap Hell and can easily maneuver by moving one or two of TJ Brodie (5m), Petr Mrazek (3.8m), or Jake Muzzins (5.625m) for cheaper alternatives.
Where they find themselves is as much as you can ask for from a GM. The coach and the players are the ones responsible for performing when it matters most.
I’d show loyalty to Dubas and expect him to eventually deliver, he’s done a good job so far and can, and will, get better. He just needs to find the beating heart of Howard Ballard and stab it with a silver knife to end the curse.