The tenure of former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas was a polarizing one for Leafs nation. The young up and comer took over the club at a promising time, in which large expectations were planted and sadly for them never met.
There are a handful of moments looking back on one would expect to be Dubas’ biggest letdown during his time in Toronto. The big ones that come to mind mostly include contract negotiations, an area Kyle hopes to improve on handling now at the reigns of the Pittsburgh Penguins as President of Hockey Operations. The William Nylander hold out in which the Swedish star missed the start of the 2018-19 season is a big one that will give any Maple Leafs fan dreadful flashbacks.
However, the Nylander situation was not Kyle Dubas’ biggest regret as Leafs GM. Nor was it the initial Mitch Marner contract extension drama that laid the groundwork that eventually led to his Leafs exit this past season. Nor was it any of the many early Maple Leafs 1st round playoff exits that took place routinely throughout his Toronto tenure.
As revealed recently on the “Cam and Strick Podcast,” Dubas’ biggest disappointment at the helm of the Leafs was the Mason Marchment trade. An answer next to no one probably had on their bingo card.
With that being said, when you get in the weeds of the situation the revelation makes sense. Mason Marchment is exactly the type of player the Leafs were missing throughout many of those anti-climatic playoff runs: A hard nosed middle 6 forward who can also provide offense in key moments.
The player Dubas received in return for Marchment was Dennis Malgin, who never amounted to the player the Leafs would have hoped for there. Meanwhile the current Seattle Kraken Marchment has gone on to become a consistently reliable offensive threat, amassing 76 goals and 113 assists in 302 games thus far in his NHL career.
We’ll see if Kyle Dubas learns from his past mistakes as he now runs a Pens team in a vastly different plain than the Leafs team he left.
