Kyle Dubas will make his return to Scotiabank Arena for the first time since leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs as GM on Saturday night.
After spending nine seasons in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, Kyle Dubas is back, now as the GM and President of Hockey Operations with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Penguins aren’t off to the greatest start, but they’re still technically above .500 with a 13-12-3 record, sitting in second last within the Metropolitan Division. Although they’re seventh out of eight teams in the Metro, it’s not as troubling as it sounds, since they’re only four points out of a playoff spot, and beset by a terrible power-play, which, when you look at their roster, should self-correct any time now.
That division is so stacked this year and the only team that has ran away with anything is the New York Rangers thus far, so Pittsburgh making the playoffs isn’t far-fetched at all.
In fact, based on Dubas’ history, I’d put money on Pittsburgh making the playoffs this season, thanks to a big in-season acquisition by him. He’s never been shy to trade a first-round pick or make a move to improve his roster when they’re struggling, as shown by the next few slides.
There are still a lot of Dubas haters since the Leafs only made it out of the First Round once, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. He continued to add to this roster year-after-year and put a fantastic team on ice, but unfortunately couldn’t win a championship.
It was the best roster we’ve seen in 20 years, so we should be thankful for that, so let’s look back on his best five moves as GM.