Im from the future:

Toronto wont make it past the 1st round again this upcoming year and they will ship off Tavares to Seattle

if Leafs didnt sign tavares you know full well they would have thrown dumb money at next years biggest UFAs like someone like Matt Duchene , Pavelski, etc etc

Ya, call me stupid, but I'd take Tavares.

or could have been even worse....keep Gardiner and signed Myers as well. They wouldnt be sitting on cap space for a full season

Ya, I hate it when people talk about how the leafs would have cap space for Kadri, Pietrangelo, Kapanen, Johnsson and Brown if they didn't sign Tavares. This roster also isn't that much better than the current one.

He won't want to go there. NMC's and NTC's should be eliminated from the nhl. Tavares is far from the worst NMC out there though.

And they are picking and choosing a roster over the seasons in order to do it. they wouldn't be landing both Brodie and Pietrangelo in the same offseason either.
It just dosent work like that.

This appears to be inaccurate, you have Kadri pencilled in as your #2 centre but it says here in my notes he's suspended
It's as if people forget why we traded him lol, he literally cost us 1 (2019) and even arguably 2 (2018 too) playoff series

because he's the problem lol

notice how when tampa got bounced in the playoffs multiple times over the years they actually KEPT steven stamkos and victor hedman, because the playoff failure happens in spite of those guys, not because of them

they won without Stamkos this year. If i had to choose between keeping Stamkos or keeping Cirelli and Palat beyond this year, id choose the latter. Depth is everything

This year, but any year they could've won with him. He was still one of their best players in the regular season too.

My point is you don't get rid of your best player when you don't have team success. You press on with you core best players and change the dynamics around them

In 18/19, Tavares was the leafs' best player, he had a wins above replacement of 3.6, to Kadri's 0.3. They made the playoffs by 4 points - he was worth about 6 extra points compared to a league standard player. The guy had 47 goals, he was a titan of offence for the team and almost singlehandedly propelled them to a playoff spot, and he was point per game this year. He is not the reason we lost in 7 to the cup finalists or this year to colombus.

Dubas really doesn't have that sort of reputation. Signing Tavares was a great move and anyone who disagrees is straight up just listening to idiots in the media. He could have gone after Pietrangelo but has already said his offer wasn't even close. What he has done in FA is sign good players for next to nothing and also got Brodie and Tavares. If you take out Tavares, the average cost of his FA signings is around 1.5 million and that includes Brodie's 5 million. Just people talking without caring at all if anything they say is accurate at all.

Exactly. Tavares was actually a good signing. A little expensive now. But he was the reason they made the playoffs 18-19, so saying they would have made it farther without him is ridiculous.

I fully agree.

Completely ridiculous, having two elite centres is something everyone wants but chirps TO for having it.

Other than Pittsburg, and even that is debatable due to age, or Edmonton, but that's also debatable since Draisitl is not always a centre, Toronto has the best 1-2 centre punch in the nhl.

I think so as well. Edmonton is good as well.