The fuse was lit days earlier. When the Toronto Maple Leafs announced they had parted ways with GM Kyle Dubas Friday, it wasn’t exactly a surprise given the somber, contemplative tone of his presser Monday, in which he said he wasn’t sure if he would re-sign given the toll the job had taken on his family.
What we didn’t know until Friday was that the Leafs' brass was on the same roller coaster, caught off guard by Dubas’ public comments, not knowing what their GM would do. The bomb went off in a stunningly open-book media availability session Friday when team president Brendan Shanahan expressed that he had been confident in Dubas returning to the job before Dubas voiced his uncertainty to the press on Monday. It led to a tense week of talks, a “gap” in salary range and, eventually, the Leafs deciding to walk away from Dubas.
So what happens now? The Leafs are fresh off their first playoff series win in 19 years. They have designs on seriously contending for the Stanley Cup next season. Two members of their Core Four forward group, Auston Matthews and William Nylander, enter the final seasons of their contracts and are eligible to sign extensions on July 1. There is work to do in Toronto’s front office. The GM position needs urgent filling as the offseason blitz of the draft and free agency begins in five weeks, as Shanahan acknowledged Friday.
“What I would say is that I’m going to be open-minded as to who that person can be,” Shanahan said. “I want to be open-minded to all candidates. Certainly having an experienced general manager would be an attractive quality.”
Who are the most logical candidates to step in as Toronto’s next GM? Consider these names, listed alphabetically.
Marc Bergevin
Bergevin would easily be the most polarizing name to pull from the list of candidates, next to dusting off Stan Bowman. He handed out many of the contracts that took on water and dragged the Montreal Canadiens into their current rebuilding period. He was also the one calling out Logan Mailloux’s name at the end of the 2021 NHL Draft’s first round after Mailloux had renounced the idea of being drafted in the wake of being convicted of a crime of a sexual nature. On the other hand, Bergevin guided the Habs through an era that included multiple division titles, an Eastern Conference Final birth and a trip to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final. Bergevin has worked under Luc Robitaille as a senior advisor for the L.A. Kings in the last season and a half, and Shanahan and Robitaille are friends as former Detroit Red Wings teammates. So Shanahan would trust a candidate recommended by Robitaille. Bergevin checks the “experienced” box.
Mathieu Darche
The Tampa Bay Lightning’s development system is the envy of the league for its ability to turn seemingly marginal prospects into viable NHLers. Darche has worked for the Bolts as director of hockey operations since 2019-20 and was promoted to assistant GM starting this season, apprenticing with the wizard Julien BriseBois. Darche’s specific experience, seeing first-hand how a championship-grade team stays competitive despite losing stars as cap casualties, would be extra relevant for a Leafs team trying to figure out whether it should keep its expensive core together.
Kris Draper
Draper would qualify as somewhat of an off-the-radar hire, but don’t sleep on him. He has worked in the Red Wings front office for more than a decade, sponging up expertise from the likes of Ken Holland, Jim Nill and, now, Steve Yzerman. Draper is blocked; there’s no way he’ll unseat the legendary ‘Stevie Y’ for the Detroit GM job anytime soon. Draper brings diverse experience, having been a special assistant to the GM but transitioning to director of amateur scouting, a post he’s held for several years. He’s a media-friendly personality who happens to be from Toronto and has a long friendship with former teammate Shanahan.
Brandon Pridham
If the Leafs want the quickest, smoothest transition to a gig that requires a lot of action in the near future: Pridham might be the way to go. Shanahan said explicitly Friday that in the meantime, before filling the job, “I’ll be leaning heavily on Brandon Pridham, and that “I’m not ruling anybody out at this point.” Having worked for years at the NHL with Central Scouting and the Central Registry, he is one of the sport’s foremost salary cap experts. He was instrumental in helping Dubas with salary-cap gymnastics in recent seasons. Pridham might not have the biggest media presence but, theoretically, he’d be well-equipped to hit the ground running in an organization that is already completely familiar to him.
Steve Staios
Staios has to be one of the more experienced people in the sport who hasn’t yet nailed down an NHL GM job. He feels long overdue for a shot, having spent seven seasons running the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs, with a stint as Canada’s World Junior Championship GM mixed in. Staios gets talked up as a logical successor to Ken Holland in Edmonton, but that vacancy doesn’t exist at the moment. Staios first cut his teeth in an NHL front office with the Leafs, working from 2012-13 through 2014-15, overlapping with Shanahan’s tenure for a year.
Jason Spezza
Spezza, an NHL GM, just a year removed from retiring as a player? He’s certainly an underdog for the gig given his lack of experience. But he was hands-on in his first season as special assistant to the GM, known to be an extremely opinionated member of Dubas’ staff. No candidate is more familiar with the Leafs’ player personnel than their own recent teammate Spezza, who would also bring a comfortable public presence, having been a media darling during his three seasons playing for the Leafs. What Spezza would need if hired is an assistant GM who understands the cap minutia – like Pridham, whom the Calgary Flames are planning to interview in the coming weeks for their GM job.
Brad Treliving
If the Leafs want to go with a louder hire, an experienced and aggressively active GM who will come in unafraid to clean house? That’s Treliving, who completed one of the wildest offseasons of all-time last summer with the Calgary Flames. Having already held down a GM job in a Canadian market, he’d handle the pressure better than most candidates. And there’s something to be said for bringing in a true outsider with no prior attachments to the current roster. Things would not be quiet if Treliving comes to town. He’d take the bull by the horns.
Eric Tulsky
If Twitter could vote on the next GM of any NHL franchise, let alone the Leafs, Tulsky would win. He’s a brilliant mind whose analytics work leapfrogged him up the Carolina Hurricanes front office ladder, from analyst to director of analytics to vice-president of hockey management to assistant GM. The next logical step is to become a GM. And plenty of people would be rooting for Tulsky, one of the industry’s good people. But would an analytics-focused GM feel too much like a Dubas retread? And would Tulsky, known as a relatively shy personality, want the Hogtown limelight?
Ray Whitney
Whitney was a finalist for the San Jose Sharks’ GM job last summer, losing out to Mike Grier. Whitney has spent more than half a decade as a director for the Department of Player Safety, and Shanahan is familiar with taking that route to an NHL front office, having headed up the DOPS before accepting the Leafs' job in 2014. An advantage of working for the DOPS: it involves regular dealings with GMs around the NHL. Every other GM would likely already have a degree of familiarity with Whitney.
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