[Alter] Kyle Dubas révèle que la poursuite d’Erik Karlsson a commencé en tant que directeur général des Maple Leafs
"It was a fairly lengthy process that goes back to my previous employment."
Kyle Dubas admitted revealed he was in pursuit of Erik Karlsson while he was GM of the #Leafs.
How would you have felt about Erik Karlsson joining the club had it happened?https://t.co/hhrXhmGH5g
— David Alter (@dalter) August 8, 2023
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carefulwisdom
28 Comments
At 50% retained? Sign me up.
No way.
Leafs might not make it past the 2nd round but at least they had a GM that made big trades that gave them hope. Now that’s gone.
Four more years at $11.5m (or even $10m, which the Penguins got) could have presented serious issues for this team. We’re already having issues with building depth with the salaries of the « Core 4 », imagine that became the « Core 5 ».
Add to that Karlsson’s history. Last year was incredible, sure, but he wasn’t particularly special offensively for FIVE seasons before that, has always been bit of a defensive liability, and missed more than 26 games in all but one of those seasons.
If the Leafs acquired him, best case Ontario is that he continues putting up 100+ point seasons and keeps playing 82 games until he’s 37 (pretty darn unlikely given his history, imo), but nonetheless represents another massive double digit salary on the books.
Worst case scenario, we have an anchor of a contract on the books for an aging defender, who can’t stay on the ice, that limits our ability to add depth pieces throughout the remainder of Auston-Mitch-Willy’s primes.
I’m pretty happy Dubas didn’t make the deal while he was there.
No real way to make it fit without dealing one of the core 4. Even if he could it would be a cap shit show for another year.
For 2.5M more Tree got Bertuzzi, Domi, and Klingberg while keeping the core 4. I’d much prefer that.
If that was Kyle’s vision for this team I’m glad he’s gone. We don’t need a guy who is one injury away from retirement. He’s a winger who plays defence. The logic behind putting him on this team with this roster is insane.
I mean, this he could’ve worked since we needed that Puck mover, but no 2 trades are the same and we’d have had to give up a lot more value than the Pens just to clear enough cap.
We don’t have the shit contracts like Granlund or aging contracts like Petry, so we likely would’ve had to move someone valuable like Brodie or super valuable like Willy, to clear the space required to fit him.
Conversely this would have certainly brought the prospect/pick price down significantly
Just twisting the knife a bit more.
EK65 with AM and Marner would’ve been absolute money. We’d be East favourites in my mind.
I don’t know if we want that contract forever, but I think he would have been the huge huge addition at the deadline we needed, especially if we had the retention + cap room available to still get ROR.
Karlsson manages to get 3 points and -2 for the night.
Thank fuck hew not in charge here anymore…
Lol he just doesn’t learn from his mistakes, had to go make a big 4 in Pittsburg too lmao
I was wondering about this on my drive to work, it came up a couple of times last month but we’re always linked to the big fish anyway.
Karlsson to TO would surely mean one of Nylander or Marner going out right?
I’m more or less content with the team that we have currently going. Adding an EK65 while keeping the same Core4 wouldn’t help at all. It would only put a bigger microscope on the highest paid players on the team to perform and if they didn’t again then all hell would break loose. Rielly seems to have finally found something these past playoffs and is in serious need of a stay at home RH vet on his right side to help lessen the pressure of his mistakes when he joins the offensive rush. Brodie and Klingberg are definitely going to be our 2 D Pair because both players complement each other perfectly. One is defensively responsible with the puck and a great passer but average puck carrier while Klingberg is an offensively minded RH puck mover who is a threat at the point but lacks defensive instincts to rush back into his own zone but luckily Brodie is one of the best 2 on 1 D men in the league as well. The only other problem I see is that 3rd LHD spot because we can not expect Gio to play a Full 82 Gm season at his age plus Liljgrenn has to begin to take the next step in his development by getting full ice time in an 82GM season. As I see it, the Leafs need a few more things in order to round out the roster. 2 Long D ( 3rd Pair and Top 4 RHD ), Vet goaltender on a 2 Way contract in case either Samsonov or Woll get injured, and an 2 Way 3rd line C to play alongside Knies and guide him as much as I would like Knies to be in the Top6 with Matthews and Marner I feel like sheltering him a bit will help him in the long run
Karlsson had 101 points in 2022-23. He had 142 points in the previous 4 years combined. Odds are he regresses back to the mean. Dubas loves to bet the farm on a core 4 (which has not worked in Toronto) yet it is somehow going to work for 4 players averaging more that 35 years old.
Pissed away too many of our picks to land him probably.
Id take Pitts first over ours as well. He just set Pitts franchise back another 2,3 years with that spinning the tires move. Doubt they even make playoffs
Do people not get that so much goes on before a trade? I.e. what San Jose may be looking for, how is EK’s injury holding up even in his Norris season, potential packages, etc.
Chances are something like this has been discussed for months.
He’s a great player. My guess however is he can’t repeat last year and it’ll be an albatross for Pitt come next season. Kyle’s got balls tho and I wish them luck
Sure, rub it in Kyle.
This tells me that Treliving was listening to the org’s existing analysis when he signed Klingberg.
That analysis presumably saw the value in improving puck moving and offense D. After the signing, I think we all assumed it was Treliving who made the call since we already have Reilly (and Dubas got rid of Sandin). But we now know that Dubas had his eye on Karlsson, and now we have a similar styled player (for 40% of the caphit, and for one fourth the term).
Another connection is that Frieds reported the Dubas pursued Pridham for the Pens GM job. Pridham stayed. I think we can Treliving has won over the existing front office, in part, by listening to them.
Whether a Karlsson/Klingberg type is what the team needs will be seen. But I get the sense that Treliving has stabilized things in the front office after the unexpected departure/firing of Dubas.
« I had a two 11 million dollar contract a day habit. I couldn’t get enough! »
I’m really not sure how that would have looked. There would have had to have been a great deal of retention involving a third team.
Dubas has a thing for shiny toys. Pretty sure the leafs have like $50 out of $80m on 5 players. EK at like another $10m ?? Insanity
Never know what could have been if there was a trade for EK. Maybe he finds a way to get 50%+ retained with a broker team. Maybe Nylander ends up going the other way. There’s no way of knowing if/how a potential trade could’ve happened, and what it’d mean for the current roster.
The only real take away here is that Dubas was trying to find a creative way to get an elite talent, because the trade he made was creative, and there’s no path to a similar deal with the Leafs roster.
Well I’m glad it ended as a Pens GM.
Jesus, I wonder how we would have pulled that off. 4 players at $10M or higher is kind of insane
I’m not going to take anything away from his « super stardom », but I’ve seen what he was capable of defensively when he still played for Ottawa. That was a long time ago, sure, but he would never be a guy I’d hate playing against if you know what I mean. Not for us.
Adding More offence isn’t the solution to scoring in the playoffs. It’s for the current players to start scoring and stop being shut down so easily. You say you’re a superstar. Go prove it.