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 Kr55
Messages: 12880
Registered: May 2002
Location: Edmonton
6 Cups
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| RDOilerfan wrote on Thu, 01 June 2023 12:17 |
| smyth260 wrote on Thu, 01 June 2023 11:31 |
Wish we would have taken a stab at bringing him into our organization. Creative and forward thinker.
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No thanks. All his creative and forward thinking has got the Leafs exactly what? His finger prints are all over the team that do well in the regular season but crap the bed in the playoffs year after year when the hockey gets a little more competitive and harder to play. Defense and goaltending have been the issues for years and defense and goaltending are still the issue after he left. Fun part, his forward thinking has the Leafs with Murray and his 4.68 mill on the cap for this coming season.
I'm actually surprised he took the job. The Pens are a very old team with a lot of aging superstars that want the team to be competitive and try to win before they ride off into the sunset but the team lacks talent in the organization because for years, they have been dumping picks and prospects to try and stay in the winning window. This team screams needing to rebuild but they probably can't for at least another couple of seasons.
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I think Dubas actually did a decent job of finding goalies and D finally with the space he had (there is a TO advantage aspect to this that let him get cheap decent players because they just wanted to play for the Leafs). He also hit the mark with his deadline moves.
His biggest issue is being married to his forward talent IMO. He just too much tied up in too few players. That required all the juggling and creativity to make max use of what was left. He was married to Marner, Matthews, Nylander and JT. 40.5M for 4 guys, usually had about that left for the other 16-17. One day that forward group COULD go further, but so far, I think too many of them have buckled under the pressure too often for their team to really figure things out in the playoffs. Plus the price is about to go up on Matthews and Nylander if they want to keep them.
His unwillingness to trade top guys would have actually worked well here. Don't trade McDrai, fine. Now you have 60M+ to finish off the lineup. If we had proper cap management all this time, plus a willingness to scam LTIR with extended injuries, trade for LTIR space, etc... There are far better lineups we could have iced for the playoffs this last 8 years. But, we keep buying players out, signing plugs to ridiculous deals, are scared to be creative at the deadline to exceed a cap limit playoff lineup.
It's not a crazy high bar to hit, so have a GM that isn't terrible at cap management. I think we know Dubas is not, aside from being married to the top end skill he inherited (and added JT because who could resist making that kind of splash, I'm sure the entire org and owners wanted it). Maybe Staios has a brain though!
"We need to get better immediately. That starts today"
- Lowe, 2013
"Next year I would forecast as another developmental year"
- MacT, 2015
5 x $5,000,000
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