The great irony of the Toronto Maple Leafs is that Kyle Dubas was right

The Toronto Maple Leafs will live to regret letting Kyle Dubas go in favor of keeping Brendan Shanahan on as president. Although it doesn't seem like it now, the NHL's youngest executive came withing inches of revolutionizing the NHL during his time running the league's premier franchise.

As the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs Kyle Dubas tried to innovate in a league that is extremely hostile to innovation, and it nearly worked.

Dubas' great innovation was to put into practice what Hockey Analytics had been saying for years: that star players were worth the money, but mid-range players didn't provide enough on-ice value to make them any more valuable than replacement players.

Therefore, the Studs and Duds Salary Cap Philosophy was born.

The great irony of the Toronto Maple Leafs is that Kyle Dubas was right

Under Dubas' direction, the Leafs signed Free-Agent John Tavares, along with huge contracts to Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and eventually, Morgan Rielly.

The Leafs had five players making more than half the salary cap, and they still do (although current management has used the growing salary cap to spread the money around, to negative results).

Despite it having been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that this philosophy is correct, crticicm still persists.

Now, it is true that the Leafs didn't win the Stanley Cup doing this. It's true that perhaps a more balanced roster might have been better. I am not here to say that Dubas was the perfect GM or that he didn't make several terrible errors.

But, the salary allotment was not one of them.

Think about it: The Toronto Maple Leafs signed all four of their big contracts right as the NHL Salary Cap was set to SKYROCKET. That isn't an exageration either. The salary cap was supposed to go up by the biggest amount in its history because of the "perfect storm" of NHL Expansion, a new TV Deal, and Legalized Gambling.

This wasn't a weird bet that didn't pay off - the expansion, gambling and TV deal were signed and sealed, all that was left was to wait. In the interim, the Leafs signed everyone.

After doing so, the Leafs went to to fail spectacularly with some of the most ridiculous and unlikely losses, most infamously losing 11 straight elimination games, something that had a 99% chance of never happening.

But, during all this losing, the Toronto Maple Leafs had the longest stretch of sustained competitive hockey in their post-expansion history. The Leafs were top-of-the-league favorites in every single years since signing John Tavares and today.

And they did that with four players taking up half their cap. And the reson that it was half the cap was a world-wide pandemic that froze the salary cap for four seasons.

During one of these seasons - when they traded for Ryan O'Reilly - the Leafs had the best roster in hockey. Tell me, how do you have the best roster in hockey with half your cap going to four players in the third year of a frozen-cap if it's such a bad idea?

Clealry Dubas strategy was a winner. If there was no pandemic, the Leafs would have an absolute ton of cap-space during the 2020-23 seasons. They never would have had to make hard decisions on players like Zach Hyman. Better UFAs would have been open to them. A dynasty was not only possile, it was maybe even likely.

The criticim of the Kyle Dubas Era is embarassingly stupid. I'm sorry for saying that, but it's indisputable. The criticism of the Kyle Dubas Era essentially ammounts to "they didn't win the Stanley Cup so they suck" while completely ignoring both the varience of the NHL Playoffs and a game involving goalies in general.

The fact is, the Leafs could not have predicted or accounted for the possibility of the pandemic. If there was no pandemic, Kyle Dubas would have locked up five superstars with money to burn. The fact that they competed during the next four season despite this proves it was the correct strategy.

It turns out Kyle Dubas was right.