Toronto Maple Leafs: The Top 5 Moves of the Kyle Dubas Era

Kyle Dubas has made some great signings in his short tenure as Toronto Maple Leafs G.M., but it’s his decisions on when to walk away from a player have been just as important.

Signing a player is hard, but knowing when NOT to re-sign a player is even more important and the Toronto Maple Leafs have faced this situation many times lately. When it comes to being a general manager in any professional sport, letting a player walk away is one of the hardest things to do, especially when a fan-base has fallen in love with ‘X’ player. Also, whenever a team decides to pay a player for their past performance, that typically doesn’t end up well.

Value is one of the most important words in a salary cap world. Like any boss in business, you want to get the most out of your employees. However, in professional sports that means that you want to pay the player the least amount of money possible, and get them to perform well beyond that price tag.

For example, the Toronto Maple Leafs currently have a player that is doing exactly that right now and his name is Zach Hyman. Currently making $2.25M per season, Hyman is set to become an Unrestricted Free Agent after the 2020-21 season and the team has a very important decision to make.

Based on his production over the past few seasons, Hyman is performing better than contract. In fact, based on a model I created a month ago, I think the Toronto native is outperforming his contract by $5.387M and would be worth over $7M on the open-market. That model takes into consideration that Hyman would have scored over 30 goals this season and that type of production is rare in the NHL and goal-scorers deserve to get paid.

As a result, the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to have to ask themselves a few questions next off-season. Do they pay a hefty price and re-sign Hyman, or let him walk and hope one of the younger players can replace his production?

That will be the next biggest decision by Kyle Dubas and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but here are the top five moves by the current G.M. thus far:

#5. Trading for Jack Campbell

One of the biggest mistakes that Kyle Dubas made was putting Curtis McElhinney and Calvin Pickard on waivers, while keeping Garret Sparks. Obviously, the team didn’t expect that both goaltenders would have been claimed on waivers, but it happened and killed the depth of the organization.

Instead of having a quality back-up goaltender (or two), the team was stuck with Sparks as their second-stringer. Many loved Sparks based on his play during the Toronto Marlies Calder Cup championship run from a few months prior, but he had many flaws that showed up right away at the NHL-level.  Compiling a 3.15 GAA and 0.902 Sv% in 20 games as the back-up, the team had to move on from him immediately.

This is where the acquisition of Jack Campbell comes in, as one of his best moves thus far as G.M. I know it was based off a previous mistake, but getting Campbell was a tremendous addition to the team. Although we’ve yet to see this trade blossom fully, I promise that’ll happen whenever the 2020-21 season starts.

Not only is Campbell’s contract great ($1.6M cap-hit), but he’s proven in 64 career starts that he’s a worthy back-up. Campbell’s numbers are similar to Freddie Andersen’s, registering a career 2.58 GAA and 0.916 Sv% (stats via: hockeydb.com).

This move is higher on the list than maybe some expected, but that’s based on what he’ll provide in the next two seasons. I’m confident that he’ll be a perfect back-up to Andersen and could potentially be the starting goaltender come 2021-22.

#4. Trading away Kapanen and Johnsson

Kasperi Kapanen trade: 

• Toronto Maple Leafs acquire: David Warsofsky, Filip Hallander, Evan Rodrigues and 2020 First Round pick (Rodion Amirov)
• Pittsburgh Penguins acquire: Kasperi Kapanen, Jesper Lindgren and Pontus Aberg

Andreas Johnsson Trade

• Toronto Maple Leafs acquire: Joey Anderson
• New Jersey Devils acquire: Andreas Johnsson

The Toronto Maple Leafs were not only able to clear $6.6M in cap-space for two third-liners, but the package they received in exchange for both players is insane. Joey Anderson ($750K) should be able to jump into the NHL line-up by the 2021-22 season and be a third or fourth-liner, while Filip Hallander and Rodion Amirov are on their way to the NHL slightly later than that.

Both Hallander and Amirov will be on an Entry Level Contract and should be able to provide similar production to Kapanen or Johnsson. Even if it’s less, for the amount of money they’ll be making, it’s a huge upgrade.

I loved Kapanen and Johnsson, but this move was a great example of how the Toronto Maple Leafs evaluate talent. They were able to trade $6.6M worth of contracts and get just as much value in return for little money towards the cap. From there, that cap-space opened up room for the signings they made this off-season and set the team up better than they previously were.

#3. Letting JVR, Bozak and Komorov

The summer of 2018 was a big off-season for Kyle Dubas, as this was his first as Toronto Maple Leafs G.M. The team had a ton of decisions to make, as they had their core of Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner set to become RFA’s soon, while they had some big decisions to make with veteran talent.

James van Reimsdyk, Tyler Bozak and Leo Komarov were three pieces to the Toronto Maple Leafs that many fans wanted to see return. However, the new G.M. made an important decision by not re-signing any of these players, which helped clear space for more important pieces.

Here’s what all three of these players made in Free Agency:

• JVR: $7M x 5 years
• Bozak: $5M x 3 years
• Komarov: $3M x 4 years

Instead of wasting $15M on three third/fourth-line players, the team decided to move on from them. It was a brilliant decision because even if the team signed one of those players, it would have screwed up the salary cap situation and made the team much worse.

With that money saved, they were able to sign future Hall-of-Famer John Tavares, who although is criticized often, is an amazing addition to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

#1. 2020 Off-Season Signings

The Toronto Maple Leafs were extremely busy this off-season and addressed a number of needs:

Signed/Re-Signed: 

• Zach Bogosian
• Joe Thornton
• Wayne Simmonds
• T.J. Brodie
• Ilya Mikheyev
• Travis Dermott
• Jimmy Vesey
• Travis Boyd
• Alexander Barabanov
• Mikko Lehtonen
• Michael Hutchinson

The team struggled in their own zone, so the addition of Bogosian, Lehtonen and Brodie should make a huge difference. Not only did they upgrade the blue-line, but Simmonds and Thornton are two local-boys who will be huge depth/veteran additions to a young team.

The rest of the signings may seem small, but Barabanov, Vesey and Mikheyev could all be future 20-goal scorers in the NHL, while Boyd and Huchinson are two depth additions in case of emergency.

Overall, the team seems to be in a much better spot than they were in previous seasons. The Toronto Maple Leafs will still need to rely on the “core-four” but that’s a given. Your best players need to score in the biggest moments and if that doesn’t happen to any team, they’re not going to win.

The 2020-21 season will be the first true season in my opinion for Kyle Dubas. From now on, we can really start to criticize and evaluate the moves he’s made because he finally has the team he wanted to construct with the man he wanted to coach it. Overall, he’s definitely made a few tough moves, but these were five important decisions that he’s currently made as G.M.