What Were the Owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs Thinking?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to be going all-in for the playoffs.

Since Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas will be running a different team next year should the Toronto Maple Leafs fail to perform well this season (I won’t say it’s if they fail to advance, because If they repeat last year’s effort and take Tampa to seven and deserve to win, but don’t, they will still get re-signed) they will be taking unusual steps to load up for the playoffs.  

If the Leafs do bomb, the team that scoops up the two best executives in the NHL will likely become the NHL’s best run team, and maybe they’ll get luckier in the playoffs or have a more sophisticated media to cover the team.

But I highly doubt that that will happen, because honestly, only a complete idiot would let Kyle Dubas go to another team.  The fact that he hasn’t been re-signed yet is an insult to Toronto Maple Leafs fans.

Well maybe not all of them.  I still come into contact with people not satisfied with Dubas’ long-term .630 regular season winning percentage, who are upset because of playoff randomness.

It is my belief that you can trace this irrational hatred of the best GM the Toronto Maple Leafs have ever had to a very poor decision made by the team’s owners.

What Were the Owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs Thinking?

The Leafs are owned by the two biggest media companies in Canada.  Bell and Rogers each own half of the Toronto Maple Leafs, so you’d think they would control the narrative that surrounds their team.

Far from it, actually.

Despite operating in an industry that is almost laughably hostile towards innovation, they decided to innovate.  That’s awesome.  When no one innovates, you don’t have to do so very much to look like you’re doing a lot, and it’s well appreciated by those who appreciate  such things.

But for the people who don’t, they usually need a little explanation, which is why it completely defies explanation why the Leafs Ownership allowed a bunch of hostile ex-employees (or people who think they should have been considered ahead of a 27 year old for a job) to constantly rip the GM and President of their most important asset.

It would be folly to stifle legitimate criticism.  I think it would be fine for TSN to have people ripping on the Leafs if they were doing bad things.  I just think it’s dumb to intentionally allow people who are hostile to what you are trying to do to have positions which make them among the most influential in the game, when you control everything.

If there are fans who don’t like the current regime, I’d suggest that’s probably the fault of ownership for allowing TSN to put guys like Dave Poulin (who was fired by Shanahan, and Kyle Dubas once upon a time literally replaced him as the AGM) on TV for years and years to air their horribly outdated takes, many of them hostile to Dubas and Shanahan’s way of doing things.

The fact is, many, possibly even most, of the mainstream NHL media did everything they could to protect their perception as Experts from an onslaught of bloggers using advanced stats.  Unfortunately, for guys like Dave Poulin, who was in the NHL, this led to a refusal to learn new things and a sharp descent into irrelevancy.

Others, like Mike Johnson, accepted the new information and now combine their access to information far superior to traditional scouting, with their experience playing in the league.  He is now, easily, one of the best voices in the league.

I am not saying that TSN and Sportsnet should be Pro-Leafs.  I just can’t believe that while owning the Toronto Maple Leafs, they would hire actual people fired by this regime and give them prominent positions, for years and years, to rip them.

Kyle Dubas and Brendan Shanahan are objectively good at their jobs.  Why isn’t there someone on TV explaining the dubious nature of the NHL playoff seeding system, or if you deserve to beat Tampa you clearly are “built to win in the playoffs” and that a random unlucky result doesn’t make you more or less “built to win in the playoffs” etc.

As a Leafs fan, I wouldn’t hate it if every single person in the league who was paid to talk about hockey on TV wasn’t anti-Leafs.  And as a human being with a somewhat reasonable intelligence, I cannot understand why they actually pay hostile people to poison the well against their own innovations.

Are you telling me this guy can’t go on TV?  Just a little balanced covered.  That’s all I ask.  If I ever see Kyle Dubas running another team, I am going to puke my guts out.