Toronto Maple Leafs: Hockey Men are Killing Hockey

The Toronto Maple Leafs need a new General Manager.

And, to the surprise of precisely no one, the search has all but boiled down to the two in-house candidates we assumed all along.

Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter.

Now, were a casual observer to undergo a blind assessment of Dubas and Hunter’s respective resumes, I harbour serious doubts as to whether any differences would initially stand out.

To various extents, both candidates have proven themselves surprisingly adept at navigating the winding maze of hockey’s upper management. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the pair’s shared roots at the junior level.

Regarding Dubas, he took a floundering Sault St. Marie Greyhounds franchise mired in perpetual failure and turned it into a juggernaut overnight. While Hunter, along with brother Dale, invested heavily into the OHL’s London Knights, incrementally building them into the league’s platinum standard. A standard that endures to this day.

Yet, as discussions regarding the duo’s pedigrees commence, one distinct narrative refuses to stay untouched.

Essentially, the 55-year-old Hunter is considered a “hockey man”, while Dubas, 32, is not.

Ugh

Nothing makes my blood boil quite like the term “hockey men”.

Forged by hockey’s innate inner circle, and perpetuated by Edmonton’s chief water carrier, Mark Spector, “hockey men” are a group easily painted with a sweeping brush.

Consisting almost entirely of mid-40’s and older white males, hockey men drape themselves in a myriad of ill-fitting suits or form-fitting golf polos (sometimes both). Known to travel in packs, in their fleeting moments away from a golf course, “hockey men” are content to spend their days discussing the varying degrees of grit, and whether said grit will fit within their culture.

Still, the most scientifically astounding aspect of “hockey men” continues to be their unrelenting durability.

Are you familiar with the recently Hart Trophy-nominated Taylor Hall? Of course, you are. It was a “hockey man” who traded him, straight up no less, for nothing but a second-pairing defenceman. In fact, it’s that same hockey man who, two years later, now finds himself married to a roster with a glaring lack of both scoring wingers and puck moving D.

Mere weeks ago, the “hockey man” since received public, unwavering support from his owner.

The case above is certainly not uncommon. And, for the sake of brevity, I’ll spare you from the boredom that stems from reliving countless others.

Instead, I will make a plea.

Trade hilarity aside, “hockey men” are killing hockey, leaving the sport in desperate need of an ideological reset.

Former Players

Excluding fashion choices and appearances, “hockey men” tend to hold one underlying feature in common with each other.

The vast majority are former-players.

Now, that’s not to say that every “hockey man” immediately transitioned into a front office role following the conclusion of an illustrious NHL career. The “former-player” moniker happens to serve as one of the club’s rare aspects actually promoting inclusion.

These careers vary from league to league, and country to country.

For instance, Don Cherry, perhaps the eldest living resident of the “hockey men” clan, tasted NHL action as a player for but a single game. As we all know, Cherry went on to enjoy a (somewhat) successful coaching career, before eventually settling down to scream at us about visors every Saturday night.

Regardless of league, the overwhelming surplus of ex-players operating in these roles brings forth a number of issues. The most pressing of which can be found in the decision-making practices which have since become entrenched as the league’s status-quo.

Bluntly, the problem with former-players in these roles is that they are just that; former-players.

To hold an executive job, one must be officially retired from active playing duty (Chris Pronger notwithstanding). As such, the player in question likely began their career a minimum of 10 years prior to being hired, give or take.

Outdated Mentality

Do me a favour.

Pull up YouTube, head to your local library, or at the very least find a resource capable of playing video. From there, watch a hockey game, in its entirety, from roughly 10 years ago.

It’s practically unrecognizable.

Be it the induction of the forward pass, curved stick, or the butterfly style, the intricacies of the game shift with each passing era. And, as a result, methods of team building and player evaluation develop some “adapt or die” properties.

So, once retired, ex-players enter front offices having cut their teeth in bygone eras.

This isn’t to say that a number of former players haven’t identified these changes and adjusted their thinking accordingly. The likes of Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shannahan, to name a few, serve as shining examples of ex-stars constantly hungering for knowledge with a finger squarely on hockey’s pulse.

Unfortunately, they’re the minority.

Rather, we see those hailing from the eras of toughness and grit struggle to succeed in this brave new world of speed and skill.

Bygone Eras

The examples are plenty.

Jim Benning, the so-called “master scout”, was a productive defenceman in a time when everything but murder was not only legal, but encouraged.

It’s no surprise that, while attempting to form a team of bash brothers, his Canucks have since lost more games than any other NHL team over the past three years. In spite of this, Benning continues hitching his wagon to throwbacks like Erik Gudbranson, seemingly with the idea that doing the same thing over and over again will eventually produce different results.

Then there’s Dale Tallon, a fellow bruising defenceman.

This past summer, Trader Dale gifted the Vegas Golden Knights with two-thirds of their top line on a silver platter, all because Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith failed to conform to his mould of toughness.

Vegas, by the way, currently sits 10 wins shy of a Stanley Cup, led in part by the enormous contributions of both Smith and Marchessault.

In placing such crucial decisions in the hands of “hockey men”, hockey has become that of a rapidly evolving sport run by a staunchly stagnant brain trust.

Exclusion

In fact, the very term “hockey man” is exclusionary in itself.

Can a woman be a “hockey man”? If so, there’s a glaring lack of precedent to support such a claim.

While other sports slowly begin bucking tradition, hockey clings firmly to its old ways. Today, both the NBA and NFL employ female referees. A development which barely registered a blip on the news cycle’s radar because, guess what, men aren’t the only ones who can successfully call a travel.

Not to mention that San Antonio Spurs Assistant Coach, Becky Hammon, became the first woman to hold a coaching position in any of the 4 major North American sports.

And she was hired in 2014.

In the NHL, every recycled GM hire, and every scouting role handed down as a favour to a former-teammate actively denies the foot of a potential trailblazer from entering the door.

Baseball ridiculed the alternative methods of Billy Beane and Bill James upon their introduction. Now, every single MLB team incorporates those very principles in how they build and assess their future.

Which brings us back to Hunter vs Dubas.

Not So Different

On the surface, the pair seem ideologically opposed.

Hunter projects as the grizzled “hockey man” housing decades of experience. While Dubas reads as a fresh-faced idealist who, *gasp*, knows what corsi is.

Dig deeper. You’ll find they’re not so different.

Both laid deep roots in junior hockey, methodically building relationships throughout the various CHL circles while simultaneously crafting distinct management and evaluation styles. In fact, Dubas has been a member of the Greyhounds franchise since the age of 14. Serving as a stick boy before working as a scout while attending university.

Hunter and Dubas may be separated by an age gap of 23 years. But, it doesn’t negate how remarkably similar their respective paths to the Leafs front office happen to be.

Alas, despite the existence of all the aforementioned knowledge, so easily accessible that a blogger like myself can get his hands on it, we still get takes like this:

Really, Ken?

For a sport to truly reach its ideological potential, the brain trust running said sport must adapt and grow along with it.

So, as long as the “hockey men” monopoly remains free to suffocate front offices league-wide, the NHL, and hockey as a whole, will forever be denied that opportunity to grow.

Next: Dermott & Johnsson to the Rescue

Thanks for reading.