Toronto Maple Leafs: Rating Kyle Dubas Off-Season Performance
The Toronto Maple Leafs had an eventful offseason.
The Toronto Maple Leafs signed T.J Brodie, made two big trades, and signed a bunch of veterans for depth. To say the least, it was an eventful off-season.
Much like during the free agency of 2018, in which Dubas landed Tavares, there was a certain build-up which had many to believe the Leafs were working on landing Alex Pietrangelo. Heck, many crazed Leafs fans already made peace with a potential Nylander or Marner trade to facilitate Pietrangelo under the salary cap. Thankfully, he didn’t.
When it came down to it, it did not appear that the Leafs even tried to land the NHL’s biggest off-season fish. Nevertheless, Dubas had a busy off-season that changed the roster significantly for the upcoming season, whenever that may be.
The Toronto Maple Leafs offseason by trading forward Kasperi Kapanen back to Pittsburgh, roughly a little over a month later, Dubas shipped Andreas Johnsson to the New Jersy Devils. Surprising friend and foe, Dubas not only brought T.J. Brodie as the new top-four defenseman to Toronto, but he also landed Joe Thornton, Wayne Simmonds, Jimmy Vesey, and Zach Bogosian and managed to renew the contracts of Dermott and Mikheyev. (signings per CapFriendly).
With the dust, all cleared up, the Editor in Leaf writing staff came together to answer the question; “How did Kyle Dubas do in free agency?”
Let’s find out!
Ruben Gasee
Every offseason there are winners and losers and this year, the Toronto Maple Leafs are sure-fire winners. Going into the offseason, the biggest need for this team was grit and blue line help and Kyle Dubas addressed both those needs.
He was able to sign Wayne Simmonds to a cheap $1.5 million deal who will be able to provide grit by protecting the best players. Even though he’s known for his toughness which is the reason why he was brought in, he can also provide some quality hockey for the Leafs when he’s on the ice.
On the blue line, they brought in T.J. Brodie who Dubas has been targeting for a while. While he shoots left, Brodie will be stationed on the right side and has experience playing with Mark Giordano, one of the best defensemen in the league who won the Norris Trophy last season.
Brodie will be the best partner Morgan Rielly has ever been paired with which should lead to more defensive success for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Zach Bogosian was also added on a one-year, $1 million deal who will be a to put on the second or third pairing and comes with grit.
The other additions Dubas made can’t be overlooked too. Jimmy Vesey was signed for $900,000 and if he can be on the ice with Alexander Kerfoot, his former college teammate, that could bring out the best in him. They have two veteran leaders in Joe Thornton and Jason Spezza who was re-signed while bringing in Travis Boyd and Aaron Dell for depth purposes.
A huge win for Dubas and the Maple Leafs.
Dylan Murphy
Kyle Dubas’ offseason has been nothing but stellar!
“Wait, the team needs defense you say?“ He went out and got defense, not to mention, without overpaying for it.
“The Leafs need toughness and veteran leadership presence?“ He got Wayne Simmonds and Joe freaking Thornton.
“What about depth scoring?” You may scream “Du-fas destroyed that by trading away the scoring third liners!” Anyone who’s saying that is just really desperate for an excuse to hate Kyle Dubas at this point (hi Steve Simmons).
This is the most complete Leafs roster since 2003-2004, there’s no denying that, and Kyle Dubas did all of that without trading away a single piece of his core in a world where the salary cap is completely stagnant, which is nothing short of a miracle.
James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs were already one of the NHL’s best teams. I don’t care what critics say, the facts back this up. The Leafs team stats under Keefe were as good as Tampa and Las Vegas. The Leafs main problems were Babcock, injuries, and goaltending.
None of these had anything to do with the off-season we are here to talk about, but it is important to note that while most people were overreacting (to what were nothing more than unfortunate results, that easily could have gone the other way) the Leafs knew they were playing from a position of strength.
In my opinion the Leafs could have come back with the exact same roster and been one of the top two or three Cup Contenders. But they didn’t, they significantly improved by adding T.J Brodie, who is one of the best defenseman in the NHL. (Top 30 or 40 at least, and there’s 62 top pairing defensemen).
That is obviously, and without question their best off-season move, but what allowed that to happen was strong drafting and scouting that let them have replacements for Johnson and Kapanen already to go, thus giving them the flexibility they needed to avoid doing anything silly.
Brodie alone makes this off-season a huge success, but the fact that they also added Mikko Lehtonen is a huge bonus. Everything else is just a depth move that won’t really make a big impact. Of course if they do happen to win, Joe Thornton will probably get too much credit, and people will say Wayne Simmonds really made them harder to play against, but that will all be the typical nonsense narrative that comes with every sports team.
You could have signed any other random players after signing Brodie and Lehtonen, and this offseason would still have been exactly as successful as it is right now. Thornton and Simmonds are obviously fun additions, but difference between the best and worst third and fourth liners isn’t generally very big and, in fact, barely exists. Great job by the Leafs, by far the best off-season of any other team, save the Rangers (but that was just lottery luck).
Wilbert Timmermans
Kyle Dubas had a phenomenal offseason, he added depth on the line-up with the pillars being grit and leadership, what has been seeming to be the missing ingredient to unleash the full potential of this team’s core players.
I dare say this is the most balanced team the Toronto Maple Leafs have had in a long time.
However, I wouldn’t be truly Dutch if I didn’t find one thing to complain about, so I have.
Personally, I think Kyle Dubas skipped an opportunity to address the goaltending situation that will clearly be a problem in the near future. There were plenty of opportunities to land a goaltender for the future.
Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs have Jack Campbell which could be the solution in the future, but he hasn’t proved to be a starting NHL goaltender yet.
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Truth be told, I would have loved to see Dubas landing Matt Murray. The fact he is half Dutch has nothing to do with it, though I admit it doesn’t hurts.