TRIPLE KNOTTED - HOW KYLE DUBAS TIED THE HANDS OF TORONTO'S NEXT GM

Mario Russo

For the first time in five years, the general manager position is vacant within the Toronto Maple Leafs organization.

The chilled air within the team’s practice facility slips and slides through empty rooms, uncharacteristically unable to find a snag as it glides into the office that Kyle Dubas inhabited less than 24 hours ago.

Over the last five seasons, that room bore witness to the organization’s most monumental pivot in decades. What started as a space allocated to sign six figure contracts seamlessly transitioned into a workbench to burn some midnight oil.

An array of approaches to the seasons ahead were fortified in that very same room as well. So many ideas - plans on how to create the all-elusive ‘winning’ formula, walked through those narrow office doors. Never able to successfully depart from a place free of prisoners.

Boy, If those walls could talk.

Now those walls encapsulate an empty space, collecting dust with every passing minute as the countdown for the franchise’s next GM gets underway.

Team President Brendan Shanahan made the message clear in his Friday press conference that finding an experienced manager will be the end goal of the front office’s thorough search for a candidate.

The process will take some time - and that’s a good thing - but Dubas’ successor must be able to untangle the knot left over from Kyle’s tenure with the organization.

Just like he did back in 2018 after inheriting a series of overvalued and overaged contracts on his books from previous GM Lou Lamoriello.

The Maple Leafs are triple knotted. Tightened, and tricky to maneuver out of due to the lingering messes of former general managers.

Poor roster construction from top to bottom overhauled Dave Nonis’ Toronto tenure in the early portion of the decade.

Bad contracts and aging players followed Lamoriello around the organization for years and wielded the team’s handcuffs around the salary cap ever since.

The current shape in which Dubas has left this team is manageable for an incoming general manager to maneuver through. Core contracts can be dealt, with little pushback from trade partners. Depth pieces can be easily integrated into the lineup, and the cap isn't the issue it’s been in previous offseasons.

So where did Dubas tie his unyielding knott?

Look no further than the base of this organization and the lack of legitimate prospects that make it up.

Since his first NHL entry draft in 2018, Dubas’ first selections have been Rasmus Sandin, Nick Robertson, Rodion Amirov, Matthew Knies and Fraser Minten. Out of the pack, only Matthew Knies has shown to be the capable producer the team has hoped for, sliding easily into the top six and shining every chance he gets.

Both Nick Robertson and Rodion Amirov have followed the treacherous path of injuries throughout their young careers, with Amirov dealing with a cancerous brain tumor that is projected to sideline him from hockey activities for the next little while.

Robertson on the other hand has run out of patience with both the organization and it’s fans following his lack of production in the starting squad. Even worse, the 21-year old was drafted in the first round of 2019 and has only appeared in 31 games with the blue and white, posting just seven points during that injury-plagued span.

Outside of his first selections, the team is still waiting to cash in on Dubas’ exterior picks of Topi Niemela, Nick Abruzzese and Semyon Der-Arguchintsev - the latter two combining for just a dozen games at the NHL level.

Time will tell how tight the knot really is and was from Kyle Dubas. Being able to develop just a single player capable of being inserted in an elevated role with the squad is a failure of the former GM that appears to fly under the radar when overlooking his workload with the organization.

Whoever becomes Dubas’ replacement will be forced to do the difficult dance of managing expectations on leftover b-level prospects. Developing a new prospect system has to be on the agenda for the next general manager of the Maple Leafs. With such a deep selection to pick from this summer, that goal can easily be met to help fast-track the turnover process.

And so the rooms at the Leafs practice facility continue to remain idle as the search for a general manager with new ideas gets put into gear. In a few months, the managerial office will undergo a full makeover that aims to change the direction of this team on the fly.

The frigid air still passes through that salient room. The knotts begin to stiffen.