On Friday afternoon, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that general manager Kyle Dubas is not returning next season.
Dubas spent five years and eight days as the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
During that time, Dubas signed 204 players to a total contract value of $628 million according to capfriendly.com. He drafted 44 players and made 71 trades. No matter what Dubas did, he had his supporters and his haters.
Things might have worked out differently for Dubas if Toronto had beaten the Florida Panthers and made it to the NHL’s eastern conference final. Instead, they were eliminated in five games after ending their 19-year curse of not making it past the first round.
The writing was on the wall when Toronto decided against signing Dubas to an extension last off-season. It was a do-or-die season for Dubas, and the team didn’t get it done.
Many will argue that Dubas put too many of his eggs in one basket allocating too much salary cap space to Toronto’s core four. Auston Matthews ($11.6 million), John Tavares ($11 million), Mitch Marner ($10.9 million), and William Nylander ($6.9 million).
That’s a total of $40.4 million for four players. There was also defenseman Morgan Rielly, who started making $7.5 million this season. Those five players used up more than 50% of Toronto salary cap space. Dubas found ways of adding secondary scoring when needed, but his limited cap space made it difficult.
With Kyle Dubas out, who should be the next GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs?