def doesnt get enough credit for his drafting, sandin would be higher in a redraft and he gave up a 1st for Muzzin but picked roberston with that 2nd who today is a first round pick no questions asked if they redo it everyones going to say contracts should be F but still needs some time for that, matthews marner and tavares are in the 1st/2nd year of their deals, worst contract imo is the engvall one, def jumped the gun there, i think we could have signed mikhyev to that deal but he can easily say he wants more than that now since hes better, i know its cheap af but he should have gotten less, curious if LA would have taken engvall or timo instead of trevor moore

I agree he’s good at drafting, I’d give trading a B- but it’s not that much of a difference than your rating. I’d give him C- contract negotiating

Generous mark with contract negotiations but agree with everything else.

While he is probably not the one who is evaluating and scouting players, he still deserves credit for it, as the leader of the scouting department. Especially the Sandin one was a beauty. Even moving back for him go get an extra SDA.

I was not very happy when they gave up two 1st round picks in a row. But I think Robertson made up for that last season. Let us hope he can repeat the same this year.

I am usually the one crying about the bad contracts (as I complain a lot for the Marner contract)

But I think he overpayed good players so far, and did not really overpay bad players with bad contracts (Clarkson comes to my mind), or The Vancouver Canucks bottom 6.

This is why I was a bit generous there

agreed for sure, i think he gets the final say. Sandin being a greyhound was his pick. and yeah time will tell if he can do it again

Agreed but it is really bad that Matthews got over 11.5 for 5 years if he wanted that much AAV 8 years should have been mandatory. Same for marner 6 years should have been at 10 instead of just under 11. His next big test is the Hyman contract cause you can’t let Hyman walk.

Honestly the contracts aren't as bad as people say.

He won the Tavares sweepstakes over really great teams like Tampa Bay, San Jose, New York, Boston, and all the other teams that were reportedly meeting with him. On top of that, Tavares signed for a rumoured $2-2.5 million less than he was offered from teams like New York and San Jose. I see that as a good contract.

The Nylander contract is looking pretty good now. I have no complaints there.

Marner is overpaid by about 1.5-2M. Not egregious, and who knows, he's 22. Nothing has shown that he can't grow into that extra money, he's a very talented player.

Matthews is the face of the franchise. The MVP. 47 goals in 70 games. Worth every penny in my opinion. Term isn't great but that's 4 years from now's problem.

Leafs just need a change in the playoffs. They are such an underrated playoff team imo because of the Boston losses. Took the cup final team to 7 games while neither Columbus nor Carolina could (Carolina couldn't even get one win on them). I think once they get over the hump and take a decent run (which I think will be this year- not saying a cup, which would be nice and not totally out of question, but a nice run making it the the 2nd round or conference finals) people might start to see the contracts in a better light.

d for contracts. everything else looks good.

Matthews could have had McDavid money or more at 8 years simply due to a (formerly) rising cap. I still would have paid him the 12.5 or 13 by 8 just to keep him under, and give Marner about 1.5 less to balance it out, but overall not terrible

The thing is Dubas hasn't overpaid the wrong guys. If he had extended Kapanen for like 5 million or given Barrie a new contract for 7-8 million, as he was reportedly asking, that would be a problem. But Matthews and Marner, the guys he overpaid, are the faces of the franchise and the top-2 scorers on the team. So personally I don't care that he threw a couple million extra away because he threw it at his stars. Besides Dubas and Pridham seem to really know their way around the cap and the CBA so they'll find a way around the flat cap. I think his mark for contract extensions is fair.

I think the other marks are fair too. Barrie hasn't panned out as planned but Dubas can't be blamed for that, he got back decent value for Kadri at the time. Whatever happens on the ice is down to the player and the coaching staff, not the GM. Muzzin trade was brilliant, and getting out of Zaitsev's contract was a huge win. It sucks that they lost a 1st rounder in the Marleau trade but keeping Marner is much more important than what's going to be a mid-to-late 1st.

Drafting should be an A+ too. Don't forget that in addition to the picks he made the last 2 years (Robertson, Sandin, Abruzzese, Abramov) he was also partly responsible for the 2015 draft (as co-interim GM), where they passed on Hanifin in favour of Marner and got Dermott in the 2nd round. And international FA's obviously, Mikheyev and Lehtonen are enough on their own to get him an A+.

If Matthews got 12.5 or 13, Marner would have demanded more too...

Actually in drafting he gets an A as u should have heard the stories that came out when Lou left. Back in 2015 when Lou drafted Martins Dzierkals, Lou was telling him about Cirelli but Lou being the stubborn guy he is did not listen.

In fact if u look at 2016 its shocking what Dubas was suggesting Lou get

1. Instead of Korshkov Dubas was suggesting Debrincat but Lou didnt like him for his size, same thing happened with Bratt, and even Hart. Lou had more faith in Woll than Hart lul. Same with AHO, instead of Dermott we could have had AHO which sure meant no Tavares.

But What could have been

Debrincat-Matthews-Marner
Hyman-Aho-Nylander
Bratt-Cirelli-Kapenan
Kerfoot-Spezza-Mikheyev

Rielly-Barrie
Muzzin-Holl
Sandin-Liligren
(if lou would have never signed zaitsev and sure Kadri got traded) but this would have been a deadly contendor)

There is also the matter of contracts. While Marner got 1mill overpaid and Matthews got 3 years less term, compared to what Lou did thats nothing. He signed Marleau to 3 years at 6.25 mill and made it where we needed to give a 1st to dump him. Than he signed Zaitsev to a 4.5mill deal which made us have to take on cody ceci to get rid of him and we lost Brown.

So while Dubas may have little flaws I would rather have him than Lou any day.

I agree with all but the contract negotiation grade. It all started with Tavares. As much as I respect him, he received too much considering they had to sign Marner, Matthews, and Nylander. The only way things would have turned out better is if they either passed on Tavares, or cut the big 4 by 15 to 20% each.

Far to early to say Robertson's a clear first round pick

you do the redraft today, hes 1st round 100%

He's reeled in some nice European free agents so I agree with that one.

His drafting looks promising since he's been GM, but he doesn't really have a track record yet. He's only been GM for 2 drafts and the only player with NHL games played is Sandin. The prospects look good but it's too early to decide.

Trades I would rate lower. He's lost most of them imo. He lost the Kadri-Barrie deal, overpaid to dump Marleau, gave up Leivo for nothing, gave up Connor brown (that one was justifiable though since he had to dump Zaitsev). The Muzzin and Campbell deals with LA are probably the highlight trades, but he gave up significant pieces in both deals so i wouldn't really call it a win (more like he paid market value).

Contract negotiations honestly would be a F rating from me. Matthews and Marner contracts are atrocities. Dubas looked like a fool when Rantanen signed for over 1.5M cheaper than Marner with the same term. Matthews contract is a huge overpay when you compare to Eichel, especially with the shorter term. Tavares had to be paid big money as a UFA so I can't fault him for that price being high, but he completely botched his RFA signings. Kapanen and Holl's deals look pretty good though to be fair, but the bad definitely outweighs the good here.

Matthews isn’t close to McDavid. McDavid is the best player in the world and Matthews is arguably top 10.

for Grades I would say

A for Drafting--> If lou wasnt gm man what could have been (Cirelli,Debrincat, Aho) <-- no tavares so more cap space and while Cirelli would have had to be extended dubas would figure it out.
A for International players --> Mikheyev, Lehtonen, Barbanov, (possible Pius)
B+ Trades (Kessel, Kadri, Zaitsev, Marleau) <-- In general most of his trades were cleaning up Lous mess
B= Contract negotiations (Marner could have got 9.5 for 6, Matthews add 3 more years) the rest were fine as how do you pay 3 40 point players less than 3. Still he has improved since than with Holl at 2mill for 3 years and engvall 2 years 1.25mill.

Now if we did Lou when he was with the leafs.

C- Drafting = He thought Woll was better than Hart. To think if he had listened Korshkov would have been Carter Hart and instead of Drafting Woll he could have gotten Korshkov as not many teams were in on him.
C- International Players = Do I even need to say ZAITSEV
B+ = Contracts (Majority were good Anderson + Rielly+Kadri) but some cost the team value and were expensive to get rid of (Marleau + Zaitsev)
A = guy knows how to trade i will give him that.

Throwing away a couple million isn’t the attitude you need tho Matthews and Marner were really bad overpays compared to others that signed last summer like rantanen.

theyre 22 and not close to their ceiling, let them play into it

Well... not that anyone likes to overpay for anything, ever... but if you were to make a mistake in an overpay, where would you do such a thing?

Top two lines players or bottom line players? Perhaps a D?

Again, nobody ever wants to overpay but if it were me, I'd rather overpay Matthews, Marner or Nylander than overpay Kapanen, Johnsson, Kerfoot or any other bottom line players.

Overall I agree with most of the drafting and trades grades.

Point is the leafs should have 2.5 million more to work with then they do now. They overpaid good players but still overpaid.

Yep, Dubas did. Still rather overpay the top lines guys than the rest of them.

Show me a GM who willingly overpays and I'll show you the unemployment line.

Spot on I’d say. I think A for drafting, A for FA signings, B for trades and C for contracts.