Maple Leafs will cast wide net in general manager search, with eye to experience

The Kyle Dubas Era in Toronto has officially come to an end, as the Maple Leafs announced Friday that the club has “parted ways” with its manager of the past half-decade.

Speaking to the media Friday for the first time since the Maple Leafs’ 2023 post-season came to a close, team president Brendan Shanahan laid out the tumultuous path that led to his decision to move on from Dubas and seek a new voice for the organization.

Now, with that chapter closed, all attention turns to the future.

“My focus now, after I’m done with this (press conference), is immediately to begin the pursuit of interviewing candidates for being the next general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs,” Shanahan said Friday.

While the club conducts the search for its next GM, Shanahan said he will “lean heavily” on assistant GM Brandon Pridham. Pridham has been with the Maple Leafs front office since Dubas joined in 2014-15 — the former served as a special assistant to the GM for four seasons while Dubas was an AGM, and then moved up to an AGM role himself in 2018-19 when Dubas took over the top job.

Pridham has played an essential role for the club over his tenure in Toronto, serving as Dubas’s second-in-command and a key resource regarding all matters related to the salary cap and the CBA. It was primarily because of his mastery of the salary cap that the Maple Leafs were able to build a competitive roster around their highly-paid core.

While Shanahan made clear the club will cast a fairly wide net in their search, he confirmed Pridham will be in the running to take over the GM role full-time.

“I’m not ruling anybody out at this point. I think we’ll have all those conversations,” he said Friday. “I’m not ruling out any possibilities in a future general manager. We have to get to work. Brandon’s a great example of a guy that has excellent relationships with agents and players and getting ready for the draft.”

One name already at the centre of speculation regarding Toronto’s next manager is Brad Treliving, who recently moved on from a lengthy run as general manager of the Calgary Flames. Speaking further about what the search for Toronto’s next GM will look like, Shanahan said he would look favourably on experienced candidates.

“I’m going to be open-minded to who that person can be. I want to be open-minded to all candidates. Certainly having an experienced general manager would be an attractive quality,” he said.

Rewind back to the beginning of Dubas’ tenure in Toronto, and much of the debate back then focused on the decision to choose Dubas and his progressive vision for the organization rather than other more experienced managers in the running at the time. Though Dubas’s tenure, and that vision, ended without the championship the front office sought, Shanahan said he views the past half-decade positively. The task at hand now is simply continuing to take steps forward.

“I don’t see Kyle coming here as a failure in any way. Kyle was instrumental in where this organization is today,” Shanahan said. “I’ve got to think about, how do we get where we want to go in the future? What are the best ways for us to be better? And what are new ideas and new thoughts?”

In the wake of Toronto’s rollercoaster post-season — long-awaited first-round triumph followed by a disappointing second-round drubbing — other pressing decisions must be made moving forward as well. Top of that list is whether Sheldon Keefe will return as head coach, a decision that seemingly becomes more complicated with Dubas now out of the organization. In Shanahan’s view, though, that call won’t be his to make.

“I think that some of those decisions have to be the responsibility of the new general manager,” he said.

Also pressing is the question of whether it is time to carry out more meaningful surgery on a roster that has made little post-season progress over the past half-decade. At Dubas’s final press conference as the Maple Leafs’ general manager, he suggested it may be time to move out some part of the core that was the signature piece of his tenure with the club, referencing the tough decisions made by the Florida Panthers, who took a big swing in trading leading scorer Jonathan Huberdeau last off-season to land Matthew Tkachuk.

With a yet-to-be-determined new voice set to lead Toronto into the future, it’s unclear what the future now holds for the Maple Leafs’ core.

“I don’t want to get ahead of that,” Shanahan said of those big-picture roster decisions. “I want to speak to new candidates — I certainly have some thoughts and opinions, but the way that it’s always worked here, whether you’re president of the team or you’re pro scouts, we’ve had a very open atmosphere where people can state their opinions to the general manager, and the general manager makes decisions. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way I expect it to be going forward.

“I think when it comes to that, certainly what I took from Kyle’s comments were accurate and honest, which is — without making any promises — we will look at everything in the organization, and try to make decisions that will make us better. And that might be not on the timeline that everybody wants, it might not occur just this summer, it might occur during the season, it might occur at the next trade deadline. But, you know, just being different doesn’t solve something. Me removing Kyle from the position of general manager isn’t the solution. It’s finding something that is a better fit that is a solution. And it’s the same on the ice.

“I think that’s what Kyle was saying, and I don’t know how you argue with that — that if we find a way to make an improvement on the ice, then we have to explore that. That wasn’t directed at any one player or any one position or at any job specifically. We are, every single year, looking to get better. Sometimes we’re successful and sometimes we’re not. But that is always the goal.”

For now, though, Shanahan’s primary focus will be finding the next general manager to take over the reins, a decision that must be made fairly quickly as the club heads into a hectic period of the year highlighted by key contract negotiations and the 2023 NHL Draft.

“As far as any big major decisions, the biggest one is finding a general manager. To me, there’s an urgency to do that. I don’t think it needs to be rushed — I want to really say, I’m not going to do it in a [hasty] way. I want to be thoughtful and thorough. But I do think it is a priority and it needs to happen rather soon,” Shanahan said.

“We have a staff in place, we have a staff that certainly feels wounded today, as we all do, and as we all should. But we also have a staff that is professional and ready to do the job, and prepared to do the job. Hopefully we find a general manager as soon as possible — somebody that fits what we’re looking for, and can help the Toronto Maple Leafs get to the next level.”