What bothers me about Dubas

Gardiner's back was basically shot and he was still the leafs 2nd best defender. Moving him wouldnt have gotten anything significant and made the defence much worse.
And no way was he getting anything close to that for Barrie. The rumour was for Troy Stetcher at most

What kind of competing team trades expiring UFAs?

So with a team that has been light on defensive depth youve wanted to trade 2 defensemen for futures going into the playoffs?

No one was offering anything close to that value for Barrie. I believe at the time of the Deadline Mackanzie or some insider said he was only getting offers of 3rd round picks. Which at that point its just worth more to keep him around.

Gardiner wasn't having a great season up to that point and was having injury issues, specifically back issues.

If you want to be frustrated with asset management be mad that we held onto Bozak, JVR while at the same time spending 2nd round picks on Boyle and Plekanec.

Hard to blame Dubas on either of those moves. Gardiner had back issues in his last season with the team and the whole league knew about it. The team was contending then too so throwing a legit top 4 d-man away for a mediocre pick woulda actually been worse asset management. & Leafs asking price for Barrie at this years deadline was what St.Louis got for Shattenkirk (1st, 2nd, prospect) but no teams bit on it. They set their price and weren't going to accept anything less. That's actually smart on their behalf. It's not his fault no one would pay what they were asking