easy no from kings

The Leafs had checked in on Klingberg before (both while he was in Dallas and Anaheim), I don't think it's true that the Leafs wouldn't have signed him. Edit: It was even EF who linked Klingberg to the Leafs while he was in his final year with Dallas. He said that Dubas rejected Nil's offer because they wanted a 1st (year after Dubas gave a 1st for Foligno). As for Domi, I think the only reason Dubas didn't sign him is that he always wanted 'too much', if he was willing to take like 1.5M he would probably be a Leaf.

Trading either Nylander or Marner could have happened, I'm sure that it would have been Nylander though since that's the more acceptable trade, like the Kadri trade it probably would have been a move that they would have lost. I think he would have dealt him for Pesce +.

Kampf could have gotten a contract 2.4Mx4 isn't anything too crazy and he was one of their best defensive players, but if O'Reilly was signed then maybe he would have been gone and they would have just gone cheaper for the 4C. If Scehnn was kept around, I think that would have guaranteed that Kampf would have been gone.

There's 0 reason to think that Dubas wouldn't have signed Samsonov.

I'd like to know how Dubas would've convinced Marner to waive his NMC? 🤔

Take Byfield and Roy out of that trade and still no. Kempe at $5.5M is one of the best valued contracts in the NHL.

Have you not seen what Dubas has been doing in Pitt? Treliving is doing a much better job and he's far from done. Dubas is pretty much done as a consequence of immediately handcuffing himself for the future, just like he did in Toronto. He also said the Karlsson discussions began when he was GM of the Leafs, can you imagine if it was us that made that trade? Huge yikes...

Marner's NMC didn't kick in until AFTER he got fired. Rumours were that Marner or Nylander were going to get moved to change the team culture with Marner being the one expect to be moved.

Dubas has done fine in Pittsburgh he came in with a terrible situation, and made the best of it, he can’t control the current injuries we have. The only thing I can place blame on him for is the PP coach still having a job.

Trust me, as a Leafs fan I've heard this narrative for years. Dubas is legitimately awful dude, full stop. You say he came into a terrible situation, but Pitt's best players have been the players he acquired that are playing above the value of their contracts (Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Letang, Rust). He spent considerable assets to acquire an offensive minded D man despite already having Letang, with Karlsson having 4 years left at TEN million and already underperforming based on that. He paid to dump Granlund only to use that cap in order to pay assets for another cap dump in Smith, who after his hot start has slowed down considerably, even being passed by Granlund offensively while on a much worse team, a player who was already better defensively.

His 3rd line right now consists of an overpaid, aging Eller at C, with two players who were in the AHL last year on his wings, despite both being well past the age of a budding prospect. His 3rd line, 4th line and 3rd pair are filled with no namers. He overpaid Jarry both on dollars and years and he's already starting to come back to earth after a hot start. Your limited injuries do not explain this away at all.

The only change to the entire PP structure of the Pens is the addition of Karlsson, and they've gone from middle of the league to 3rd last, despite the incredible amount of talent in that mix. The team overall has gone from one that missed the playoffs for the first time in generations because of one bad game, to a team that is at the bottom of the league. This despite spending more assets and committing the future of their cap to an aging core that will logically only decline.

I'm not joking, he is truly awful and I'm thankful he's not our problem anymore. There's a long history of failure with the Leafs to back me up.

I mean as a pens fan I’m not really concerned with the whole Karlsson trade, hes been pretty good outside the last week or 2 and the contracts sent out warranted the assets given up to just get rid of them and getting Karlsson just was a good deal for all the teams involved, we are gonna suck in like 2 years anyways. Yeah it’s worrisome seeing smiths production decline but for a 3rd hes doing decent enough. I mean good for granlund hes got the opportunity to play 1st or 2nd line minutes there and 1st PP. he was NOT good with the pens, neither is he good defensively, no clue where you got that notion from. As for eller hes been good defensively and great on the PK. As for jarry he did not have a hot start, pens fans were already wanting him out after the first like 2 weeks then he got hot and he just had his worse game in like a month of which you can’t really blame on him giving up 2 PP goals to a deadly PP. and as for the 3rd line as a whole the DOC-Eller-Zohorna line was very good until being broken up due to injuries so that’s no excuse either. The pens 4th line hasn’t been great but they are much better then last year so can’t complain. The 3rd pair while being first timers has been serviceable enough, with one of the “no namers” starting to actually take graves spot in the past few games, i see them as decently good. The PP is simple a problem of execution idk if the players are expecting to just waltz in and score or the way they’re being coached is just that bad, its something though 4 players on that PP are playing good at 5v5 so idk what the problem is. Also we are in the mix atm, not bottom of the league. The team was always gonna be fragile with almost nothing in the AHL to speak of if injuries arise which is currently what’s happening. As a pens fan I didn’t agree or like every move or signing he made but think he did pretty well considering the situation he inherited. As for the long history of leafs failures that sadly goes way further back then dubas. And you’re in the minority of people who think dubas is god awful, seems most people believe the contracts given out weren’t all Dubas’s fault, and sadly dubas has nothing to do with the fact players disappear in the playoffs. The fanbase can be in part to blame for that, look at kessel he was suppose to be the guy and people said he’d never win a cup and look what he did in Pittsburgh. To me it seems like the playoff situation in Toronto is as much of the incredible pressure from the fan base as it is from the players, wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if one of Matthew’s mariner or Nylander make their way to another team and rip it up on the way to a cup.

Getting Karlsson was not a good deal for you guys at all. You already had a #1 D who was successful playing PP1 in Letang, who he inherited on a contract paying him less than he was worth. Karlsson had arguably the worst contract in the league for multiple years leading up to last season where he won the Norris. The only way he could possibly live up to that contract with the Pens is if he repeated that season again, which was unlikely and which he's not even close to doing. Even last year he was one of the worst defensive D in the league, and it's not like Pitt needed to take that on to add a top PP defenseman, especially one that's 33 year old and paid 10 mil for the next 4 years.

Also, it's not the 3rd you paid for Smith that is the issue, it's his age and cap at $5 mil. Regardless of how you define his start, Jarry did not show he was worth the contract he was given by Dubas and has continued to show that. Rather than spreading the cap throughout the lineup, he continues to make the same mistakes he did with the Leafs, leaving the bottom of the lineup severely lacking, so much so that they're not even able to deal with an injjury to rakell.

They're playing good at 5v5, but Dubas thought it was just as simple as throwing a bunch of talented players together on the powerplay, which has not improved it at all, instead hurting it incredibly. It's not a matter of execution so much as it's a matter of chemistry from my view. Your coaching staff has not changed, nor has blaming the coaching to defend Dubas. You are not in the mix either, you are 2nd last in your division and have only 3 wins in your last 10 games. You're on the outside and already beginning to decline.

Yes, the Leafs failures go back further than Dubas, but also further than Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares etc. He inherited the ideal situation with those first 3 on ELCs, Tavares as a free asset on July 1, and Kadri, Hyman, Rielly and Andersen all on incredible contracts. His forward group should have been set, along with his goaltending. He needed to address the D, and his biggest acquisitions to the backend via trade were Muzzin and Barrie. Muzzin was solid but often unavailable, eventually ending up on LTIR. Barrie was acquired for our most valuable asset at the time in Kadri, who was signed long term at a mere $4 mil and went out to be a critical piece of the Avs cup win. Barrie was a rental, was awful and walked for nothing. So, not the first time he made the mistake of adding an offensive D at the expense of defensive ability. Not only did this fail to address the holes at D, it also created another hole at 3C, one that he was still trying to fill last year with the acquisition of ROR, before he too walked.

Those holes at D remained too, and because of his cap structure his only option was to try addressing it through bargain bin rentals who usually required retention and were asked to play way above what they should have been; see Lyubushkin, Schenn, Ceci, McCabe, Gio, Holl etc. Our defense was never good enough, and our goaltending wasn't able to bail us out.

Why wasn't our goaltending able to bail us out? Because Dubas blundered the backup position when he let McElhinney go for an absolute **** show in Sparks, who was as awful. He then failed to address the backup position for YEARS until finally overpaying for Jack Campbell. He was so pleased with himself that he then decided Campbell should be our starter, letting our best goalie since Belfour walk for nothing. Who did he replace him with? A series of eventual cap dumps in Mrazek, Murray, Campbell. Mrazek and Murray were often injured, never played a playoff game and ended up being negative value assets. Campbell would post a sub .900% in his last year with the Leafs, only to be replaced by the guy we paid to be our backup after WSH let him walk, and Sammy would post a sub .900% in the playoffs as well before becoming an RFA.

And yes, of course the contracts given out were his fault, there's a pretty clear contrast between the RFA deals Lou gave to Kadri, Rielly, Hyman and Brown and the RFA deals that Dubas gave to Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Johnsson and Kapanen. Not only did he pay them more than league average, he also got considerably less years and made the whole process a very public fiasco. These contracts would result in us letting Hyman, Kadri and Andersen go for close to nothing, only to have them go on to greater playoff success almost immediately.

The only draft pick who would ever exceed where he was selected would be Knies, coincidentally being pretty much the only exception Dubas would make from drafting small, skilled wingers due to his theory "draft efficiencies". Year after year he would splurge all our futures on bandaids fixes that failed to be enough, and despite Marner, Matthews, Nylander, Tavares and Rielly always playing well in the playoffs they would take the blame, largely in part because of the contracts he gave them.

Then he left the Leafs for the Pens, spent 30 mil within the first two weeks of free agency, and made the team worse while locking up their cap for the distant future and spending assets to do so. Your team has already started to decline, will continue to decline after missing the playoffs this year, and will have 0 ability to change course due to your cap commitments and lack of assets. I'm not joking, he's truly, objectively awful.

Huh? That Karlsson trade was a master class.

Did you see all the cap dumps he dumped on Grier? Pitts literally dumped all their problems on the Sharks, threw em a 1st for their trouble, and gained the Norris winner for an aging core to take one last run. Perfect fit and good value.

Lol. 33 year old Karlsson making 10 mil for the next 4 years while posting 2 points in his last 9 games is the biggest cap dump in that deal, it's really not close.

Yeah idt karlsson on that cap hit is the best, but he’s way better then what we had before with those cap hits, he was the only player we could’ve really gotten without giving up a lot of our assets which were already lacking, not only that but you have to take into consideration the excitement value, alot of pens fans know that this team will be bad in a few years, even if we don’t have playoff hockey to watch it’ll be fun and sell tickets to come see Letang, Crosby, malkin and karlsson all play together. As for the bottom 6 its a pretty big upgrade from last year, they don’t score as much as you’d want them to sure, but they also are much more defensively sound and you have role players on the PK in the bottom 6 that do their job well. As for the goalie situation that’s the only thing i was worried about with Dubas he never did a good job with that up in Toronto, and as for the jarry signing he didn’t really have much of a choice, it was either him or korpisalo, and considering his history nty, id rather have the guy who proved he can be a top 10 goalie. And if you think for 1 second a team wouldn’t of signed jarry for a similar contract like the sens i think you’d be wrong, also he was lucky coming in with the D he had here, he knew he had a guy to pair with karlsson in petterson an elite defensive D who can mask some of karlssons defensive mishaps. And I’ve watched every pens game so far this year, the PP is simple they don’t move their damn feet they set up and plant and pass the puck around the perimeter the whole time until they finally take a shot that has a low %age of even getting to the net because they don’t move to open up shooting and passing lanes, trust me I’ve watched other PPs and they all skate with the puck scanning and moving to open up lanes. The pens don’t do that making the PK for the other team easy by just being able to sit in their position and wait until a pass goes awry or taking a shot that their right in position to block for. And they had a lackluster PP last year too, it just wasn’t this bad. And from what i saw a lot of people believe that shanahan or whoever was more to blame for the contracts given out, idk if that’s proven or not, but it doesn’t really matter ig, and you guys still have problems on D treliving isn’t good either. As for his drafting i didn’t look at it at all, but as of right now Yager is doing pretty damn well in the WHL and looked good in the preseason games. The only other con i saw to dubas was the leash he gave coaches, Keefe doesn’t seem to be the answer in Toronto and he seems to be giving a long leash to the coaches here in Pitt, but idk that sullys position was his choice due the the relationship he has with FSG, firing him might be off the table due to that and his contract, but he can certainly fire assistants, namely the PP coach. But again you’re in the minority of people who think dubas is a horrendous GM, most people including myself think he’s pretty good, and he will probably learn a lot from the mistakes hes made with Toronto and hopefully change some his thoughts here in Pitt.

We're getting into the weeds here and I don't intend to be hateful so apologies if that is the case. I would just ask one simple question, what has been the goal or the purpose of Dubas' moves with the Pens, and is that enough to you as a Pens fan?

To give something entertaining for us fans too watch, and give them a chance of winning. It was always my opinion that with the age and depth of this team that they were going to be the most volatile team in the nhl, and they’re showing it lol, great 5v5 and if they had a top 10 PP they’d probably be 2nd in the metro but hypotheticals don’t really matter at this point. I think not giving up like every asset we have and getting a fun player to watch was something worth doing, like I said I don’t think he’s a god amongst gms or anything but i think he did what he could with what he was given, and like every damn pens game is close right now so they’re at least all exciting to watch (unless we are on the PP) so i think that’s good for the fans as well. I get not everyone likes him and i can understand that, but to me it was exciting to be a pens fan and see what would happen so that’s enough for me personally. I also think it’s good for Dubas, as you said he more inherited a bunch of great players in Toronto, and in PItt he gets the chance to maybe have a long shot at a cup with a proven core, and after they retire he gets to do a proper rebuild making a team in his image and prove he’s either a good or bad gm. And its alright man lol, i get being frustrated as a leafs fan, and if in your opinion dubas wasnt doing a good job then by all means you have the right be happy hes gone. I just think being able to watch karlsson, Letang, Crosby, and Malkin careers all come to an end here in the burgh will be cool for us fans, especially considering all 4 of them are most likely future HOFer, (I don’t think letang is a consensus HOFer like most pens fans think, but think with the cups he will get in) and i think that’s important too.

Yeah well if that's your standard then I guess it changes the argument completely. I thought your core still had another chance at a cup, which Dubas quickly ensured wouldn't be the case. If you're just there for entertainment value then Dubas might be your guy after all. Yes, I'm frustrated as a Leafs fan, but more frustrated that people continue to heap praise on Dubas when he has nothing but embarrassing failures to show for the incredible opportunities he's been gifted.

I mean i get it, i mean i think there’s a chance but imo this year is a lot less likely given the start and the fact you have carter still on the books, think next year is the true last chance and the teams shown enough promise for me to be excited. Like i said they were a long shot no matter what basically everything had to go right and it’s not. To me it was simple give the pens a fighting chance while finding good players for little assets and that’s mostly what he did, i get the karlsson contract is overpayment, by like 2mish imo but still better then what we had in the cap space previously.