Toronto Maple Leafs: Kyle Dubas, Mike Babcock and Thoughts On Hot Takes

The Toronto Maple Leafs fired Lou Lamoriello and handed the keys of the franchise over to Kyle Dubas.

Because Dubas is in his early thirties, and Lou Lamoriello is a venerated hockey lifer, this move didn’t exactly go over well with a part of the fanbase. (Maybe most of it).

Brendan Shanahan, whose one task when taking over the Leafs was to avoid the fan/media placating of early Leafs administrations, can afford not to care.  His exact mandate has been to find  a new way to run the Maple Leafs, who, for years, have sacrificed the patience needed to build a proper competitive hockey team, and he’s done that to a T.

He started by observing the Nonis administration for a year, then he tore everything down, hired Kyle Dubas and then hired Lou Lamoriello to mentor him.  After two years, he handed over the reigns to Dubas, as was the plan all along.

Because of Shanahan’s vision, the Leafs – who forever were too bad to win, but too good to snag a real franchise player in the draft – now have three franchise players 22 year old or less.

They are in the first real season of expected-to-be competitive hockey and are in sixth place overall, despite a coach who considers Ron Hainsey a top pairing defenseman, and an optimal roster than has been together for only a single period all season.

From a long-term perspective, it couldn’t be going better.

Bump in the Road

Fans are impatient, there are thousands of articles written about the team every month, and every tiny detail is magnified and dissected.

Add in the emotions that come with this, and you get some pretty crazy takes.  But there’s nothing wrong with a little craziness.  It’s fun to be  a fan, mostly because, if you think about it, it allows you free reign to be emotional about something that doesn’t matter.

In your day to day life, you’ve got to make rational decisions, you’ve got to keep your emotions in check, and you’ve got to present a calm veneer in order to be successful.  Sports allow you to be able to drop the facade and let loose.

So personally, I don’t have any time for calm, measured, middle-of-the-road, I’m-better-than-you because you’re not applying logic to sports commentary.

I think there’s a place for good analysis, but also, sports should be fun.  In my opinion, people spend too much time complaining about bad takes.  Bad Takes are what make sports fun!!

So even if I don’t understand someone’s crazy opinion, I dig that they have it (as long as they’re nice about it).

I don’t really think anyone actually thinks that Mike Babcock is all bad, and Dubas is all good, or vise versa.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about it. Astute and regular readers of this blog will see this as a thinly veiled, transparent, explanation for my recent FIRE MIKE BABCOCK article.  Which I both agree with, and disagree with.

Babcock is crazy frustrating, but deep down, I know he’s a decent NHL coach.  I know coaches don’t even really matter than much.  But I needed to vent, and vent I did.

I still think it would be awesome if they fired their coach with eight games left in the season – DRAMA!! – but I am also willing to let cooler heads prevail when they say ‘Jim, that is your dumbest idea yet.’

Kyle Dubas

So, in keeping with the theme of transparency, I’d like to follow the retracting *and defense* of my scorching hot take, by trying to reasonably object to the opposite scorching hot takes about Kyle Dubas.

To me, the idea that the Toronto Maple Leafs are making a mistake by seemingly not caring about team toughness and grit, and that because of this, and because of a perfectly reasonable, née Team Friendly, deal to William Nylander, that Kyle Dubas is somehow ‘ruining the Leaf’ is insane.

Everything else aside, I never saw any team with Gary Roberts, Tie Domi, Wendel Clark, Doug Gilmour, Shayne Corson, Darcey Tucker, Ken Baumgartner, Leo Komarov, Matt Martin, Dion Phaneuf or Colton Orr play for a Stanley Cup.

If you don’t like Kyle Dubas, I think you’re nuts.  In his short time here, he has singed John Tavares, and locked up two of his three franchise players.  He made smart trades for Nic Petan and Michael Hutchinson, and best of all, he absolutely stole a dirt-cheap Jake Muzzin from the LA Kings.

Additionally, Dubas has laid the ground work for a sustainable development system that will allow the Leafs to spend their salary cap allotment in a “studs and duds” type way.  By signing Borgman, Rosen, Petan, Duszak, Sparks, Moore, and Hollowell to near league minimum, short-term extensions, the Leafs will be able to pay their studs and fill out the rest of the lineup on the cheap.

This is all fantastic stuff.

Now do I have my criticisms of Dubas? Yes.  I think he should have exercised his authority to get Josh Leivo more playing time so he could have avoided giving him away.  I think it was a mistake to give Conner Carrick away when he had good numbers, a cheap contract and was right handed.  I think he should have sacrificed some of the future to pick up a Gudas or a Jenson at the trade deadline.

And I think he could have tried harder to extend his big three earlier and cheaper and for longer terms. Obviously it is unreasonable to expect him to do every single thing that I think is a good idea.

But overall, I think he’s done great.  Certainly a massive improvement over Lou Lamoriello (who is basking in the credit that comes with having a pair of goalies put together one of the single best term goaltending performances in NHL history).

What I don’t think is fair to Dubas is to blast him for the Leafs perceived lack of toughness. The NHL is going in another direction.  Get used to it.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Can Win

The Leafs will win with skill, and they certainly didn’t need any of the terrible suggestions people were throwing out like Wayne Simmonds or Adam McQuaid.   Not getting those players is exactly the kind of fan/media ignoring that Shanahan and co. have to do to avoid the pitfalls of past administrations.

Kyle Dubas isn’t perfect.  But no one is.  The Toronto Maple Leafs have a great team.  And, as much as Mike Babcock drives me nuts, he probably shouldn’t be fired.  He probably even has decent enough reasons to do the things I don’t like.  He might even know more about hockey than I do.

But don’t tell me that while at the same time saying that Kyle Dubas is an idiot.  All the evidence we have suggests he’s on his way to being a great GM.

By all means, get emotional and have terrible takes.  I do and I will.  But let’s try to keep an open mind. Maybe the NHL is changing.  Maybe you don’t like it.  But maybe, a new way of doing things isn’t the wrong way.  Sure, small, fast, talented teams that don’t take penalties have historically not existed.  But maybe the Leafs aren’t that small or weak to start with, and maybe a new way of doing things can work.

The fact is the Toronto Maple Leafs tried to build big, tough, heavy teams for years.

How’d that work out?