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In their season-ending media availability on Wednesday, Toronto Maple Leafs Team President Brendan Shanahan and GM Kyle Dubas struck different tones when it came to the future of the club. Although both acknowledged disappointment at the Leafs fourth consecutive early exit from the playoffs and confidence in the quality of the club’s core group, Shanahan was more on target with his analysis after the loss to Columbus that changes need to be made.
"We really feel that this is not something we can let discourage us or we can allow this to make our players and our entire staff more determined and more mentally tough to take a bad situation and grow from it, rather than let it make us smaller and and more defeated. Right now the focus is on just how do we get better and what changes do we have to make." Shanahan said. “We certainly in some ways have taken a step back, but we are really determined in spite of that. We think there is an opportunity to take more steps forward.”
Dubas was more defiant and at times defensive when it came to the critique of the team and their ability to win with the core group of Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and William Nylander taking up nearly 50% of the club’s salary cap, refuting any misread of the potential of the group with an emphatic “No”!!!
“I think the players who we have committed the salaries to are all extremely talented players. They all produce. They are continuing — especially Auston and Mitch and William, who are all very young — to improve and get better.” Dubas said.
Given the situation, it falls on me to continue to build around that group and roll from there with it. I don’t know if the question is particularly about the depth, but if I look in our division, in terms of outside the top four, if you look at the other teams and how they are built, the rest of our lineup scored between 90 and 100 goals if you limit it to those guys. That is right behind what Tampa got outside of their top four and well ahead of what Boston got out of their top four highest-paid guys. You can verify that if you like, but I think we will be fine with those guys because we know they will step up and produce. It will be on me to fill around the edges of it.”
The issue with Toronto roster is not a question of talent or production, it’s more of roster construction and balance. It would be hard to believe that the club's brain trust does not recognize that the club is too one-dimensional and that dealing from a position of strength to help address an area of weakness is a necessity.
Shanahan believes that Leafs players can develop grit and other intangibles with experience, but also admitted that help from outside the organization may be also be needed to address that issue.
Dubas avoided saying anything concrete about making changes, because that would paint him into a corner and potentially devaluing assets, because that would be counterproductive to his goal of making the best deal possible and improving Toronto next season.
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