Saturday night the Pittsburgh Penguins roll into Toronto for the Maple Leafs season opener. A lot of familiar faces are potentially coming back into the building. Wes Clark, Jason Spezza, Jon Elkin, Cam Charron, Noel Acciari, and Michael Bunting will return, but most notably is the man who is the architect behind the current iteration of the Maple Leafs (whether you like him or not), and that’s Kyle Dubas.
It seems fairly obvious to state that the man who had a five year run as the General Manager of the Leafs and was the Assistant GM before that would have his fingerprints all over the team, and given that the Leafs weren’t magically going to part ways with Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander, and Rielly simply because they brought in a new GM, the core of the Dubas team was always going to remain intact.
Dubas’s impact is lingering in some of his other moves. Players like Jake McCabe and David Kampf are still lineup card staples. Prospects that Dubas and Wes Clark brought in, like Joseph Woll, Pontus Holmberg, and Matthew Knies, are all playing significant roles. Even Conor Timmins now seems to have a place on the team.
Even when you step away from the specific players that have stuck around, you can find glaring similarities in the replacement personnel who have come in. Chris Tanev has a lot of similarities to both TJ Brodie and Jake Muzzin. Anthony Stolarz is a Brad Treliving discount goaltender gamble similar to those that Kyle Dubas made on Jack Campbell and Ilya Samsonov. And Ryan Reaves is stepping into the tough guy role vacated by Wayne Simmonds. The comparison between former Senators Captain, Jason Spezza joining the Leafs and former Canadiens Captain, Max Pacioretty joining the Leafs seems a little on the nose.
Perhaps the one real break in roster construction is Max Domi, but honestly, there seem to be some reasonable Michael Bunting comparisons that can be made here too.
Brad Treliving’s work as the Leafs’ GM has largely involved tinkering with Dubas’ model, which many view as a wholly owned subsidiary of Shanaplan, but this year there is at least a new twist in that the Leafs now have a new coach behind the bench and 2024-25 can serve as a referendum on whether or not the Leafs have been constructed well, but had the wrong guy behind the bench. The debate might shift to Keefe being Dubas’ undoing in Toronto rather than the Core Four.
Next season when the Leafs face Kyle Dubas and the Penguins it will be interesting to see if there is still a Core Four and perhaps we will see a team that has more of a defined Brad Treliving vision, or potentially the vision of a new President of Hockey Operations if the final year of Brendan Shanahan’s contract doesn’t live up to expectations, but for now the Leafs still feel a lot more like a Kyle Dubas team than even the Pittsburgh Penguins, which remains The Crosby Show, something that seems like it might be frustrating but also comforting for Kyle Dubas as it is buying him some time to cook.
There are plenty of warts on Kyle Dubas’ legacy in Toronto. The Jared McCann situation, the Marner cap hit, the Kadri trade, the Marchment trade, and of course, Nick Foligno, but there is also the reality that he was the most successful Maple Leafs GM since Pat Quinn. The bar might have been set low since Quinn, but Dubas qualified for the post season every year, the Leafs won a division (albeit the North Division), and won a playoff round. Criticism aside, Dubas should be welcomed back by Leafs fans, but that also shouldn’t change that it would be fun to repeat the 7-0 drumming the Leafs gave the Pens last season.
