The NHL unemployment line is longer with a pair of general managers and a head coach losing their positions 48 hours after the end of the regular season.
The Ottawa Senators moved Bryan Murray into an advisory role and promoted Pierre Dorion, who fired head coach Dave Cameron and his staff on Tuesday.
On Monday, the Arizona Coyotes fired GM Don Maloney after nine seasons and are giving more control over player personnel to head coach Dave Tippett.
Arizona is reportedly looking to hire someone with a more analytics-based background and
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that the Coyotes have put out feelers about Toronto Maple Leafs assistant GM Kyle Dubas.
Dubas is in his second season with the Leafs and has served as an assistant to Dave Nonis and Lou Lamoriello, interim GM after Nonis was fired in April 2015 and general manager of the AHL Toronto Marlies.
According to Friedman, the 30-year-old is not interested in pursuing a position outside of the organization and is choosing to stay with Toronto, which is an indicator that he is pleased in his current role with the Leafs and a chance for advancement in the not so distant future.
Lamoriello is one year into a three-year deal with Toronto after spending 28 seasons with the New Jersey Devils and is said to be taking things on a year-by-year basis.
The veteran GM showed no signs of slowing down this season, pulling off a number of trades and setting up the Leafs with 20 draft picks over the next two seasons.
Speculation that Dubas will take over as GM after Lamoriello’s contract is up has never been acknowledged by the Leafs organization, but could be the reason why the young executive is not anxious to leave the club for Arizona, who have a promising future with young talent in Max Domi, Anthony Duclair, Dylan Strome and Christian Dvorak.
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The
final NHL Central Scouting rankings prior to the 2016 Draft were released on Tuesday and 18-year-old center Auston Matthews is ranked at the top of the European skaters list, while Cape Breton forward Pierre-Luc Dubois is first among North American skaters.
Matthews(who played for Zurich in the Swiss league), along with Finnish wingers Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi continue to be the consensus top three for the NHL Draft this June, but Laine has moved past Puljujarvi into second after scoring 17 goals and eight goals in the playoffs for Tappara in Finland’s SM-Liiga.
Dubois vaulted from 7th at the mid-term rankings to first after leading the Screaming Eagles with 99 points(42 goals, 57 assists) and an impressive performance at the CHL Top Prospects game in Vancouver, while Tkachuk had 107 points (30 goals, 77 assists) in his OHL debut with the London Knights.
Most teams will have widely differing opinions than Central Scouting, so it is not an accurate gauge of what will happen in Buffalo two months from now.
For example, if Toronto struck out in the lottery and selected fourth, it is likely that the Leafs would select Tkachuk over Dubois, due to Director of Player Personnel Mark Hunter’s familiarity with the young American winger.
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