Quick Shifts: Kyle Dubas circles Toronto return on his calendar

A quick mix of the things we gleaned from the week of hockey, serious and less so, and rolling four lines deep. Sportsnet assures me I'll get my $680 million at the end of my tenure.

1. We may not hear from Kyle Dubas on Saturday during the executive's hotly anticipated return to Toronto, but his presence will be felt on two rosters: the Maple Leafs core he never broke up, and the Penguins one he has aggressively tried to complement and refurbish.

Handpicked by Leafs president Brendan Shanahan nine years before his sudden and prickly firing by the same man, Dubas declined to sit down with Hockey Night in Canada for his return in Black and Gold.

But that doesn't make him any less of a story here.

"Coming in at a pretty young age with all the pressure here in this market, where else is better to learn as a young person in that job?" Sidney Crosby told reporters Friday at the Leafs practice facility, home of Dubas's old office. "He handled it great, and obviously they've had some great teams over the years."

Regular-season records and post-season regrets. A Calder Cup with the Marlies, and the big club's first playoff series victory in a generation. A long list of shrewd moves (getting Zach Hyman!) and stubborn ones (losing Zach Hyman!).

Most of all, a belief in a nucleus that is still hunting a playoff run deep enough to silence the haters and rile up the loyalists.

Dubas returns with a new/old Core Four — Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and his summertime splash-slash-gamble Erik Karlsson — that holds the hopes of the league's oldest team.

The average age of Pittsburgh's roster is 31. The Penguins have rings, but they're also in danger of going six consecutive years without winning a playoff round. Sound familiar?

In Dubas's defence: You try telling Crosby — still a Hart candidate at 36 — that you want to rebuild. Or arguing that point to Fenway Sports when they're dangling riches.

A couple of wins and power-play goals against fellow non-playoff teams have given the Penguins a foothold in the subpar Metropolitan Division, and Dubas tamped down speculation that his head coach, Mike Sullivan, is on the hot seat on Monday.

“Do I think that he's the right person for this job now and far into the future? I absolutely do,” Dubas said.

“Because in the end, the responsibility is on me to chart the course of where we’re at and where we’re going. I think we can get going in that direction if we adhere to the No. 1 rule of holes, which is: When you’re in one, stop digging.”

Dubas never did stop digging during his Toronto tenure. But in his final press conference before he left, the executive wondered if he should start digging in a different direction.

“Perhaps the path needs to shift slightly," said Dubas, before his firing, before his promotion to Pens president. "You get in between persistence and full belief versus being a little too staunch and rigid."

For years now, both the Leafs and Penguins have been rigid in their self-belief as contenders, reluctant to change leaders and head coaches.

The difference is, one group is trying to reclaim the glory days, the other is increasingly desperate to experience some.

Saturday, the Core Dubas Built faces off against the Core He's Trying to Save.

"I'm sure he's had that one circled on the calendar," Sullivan said.

We can and we will tune in.

2. When Doug Armstrong spoke in the wake of his firing of coach Craig Berube, the St. Louis Blues GM threw blame on his own shoulders. He invoked the campsite rule, albeit with some grim language.

“If I get fired in the next hour, or I get hit by a bus in the next hour, I don’t feel today I’ve left it any better than where I found it," Armstrong said. "That’s an awful feeling.”

To bring that notion to the Maple Leafs, GM Brad Treliving has, by turns, referenced (a) the rich mine of top-end talent he inherited from Dubas's tenure (you know, the guys who can whip out a five-goal period in style) and (b) the lack of trade chips at his disposal.

Second-round picks are popular currency come trade deadline. Due to Dubas's string of all-in springs, however, Treliving doesn't have one of those to spend until 2027.

That means acquiring a difference-maker via trade, not a role player or depth piece, will require spending a first-round pick (Toronto has one in 2024 but not 2025) or a coveted prospect.

The cupboards there aren't exactly flush either, which is why Treliving is quick to bring up the high cost of his trade targets.

If you're an opposing exec looking to make a big deal, surely you're asking about forwards Fraser Minten and Easton Cowan — the first two Toronto prospects to make Team Canada's world junior squad since goaltender Ian Scott accomplished the feat in 2018 (Scott played one game in the tournament).

The last time the Leafs had a skater on Canada's junior team: Mitchell Marner and Travis Dermott, way back in 2015.

"For the players themselves, it is a tremendous opportunity. It is a great tournament. It is sort of the pinnacle of junior hockey in terms of best-on-best," says Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe, who sent notes congratulating both teenagers.

"It's the stakes, right? It’s the stakes, the pressure, representing your country, coming together ... It’s all players who are, for the most part, top players on their teams, but now they come in and have to find a role and do different things than they are probably asked to do on their own teams.

"Those are the kinds of things that really help top-end players to develop."

Leafs fans should enjoy rooting for Minten and Cowan over the holidays, free of worry. But when Treliving watches, he must weigh excitement over their future with concerns of how much his pipeline's future should be mortgaged for now — an unenviable choice.

"They are both skilled guys, but both are very competitive and confident going out to make a difference," Keefe says.

"They have differences in their games for sure, but they are both confident in who they are. They are great, humble personalities in terms of soaking it all in. I really enjoyed my time with them."

3. A world junior gold medallist for Canada in January 2023, 19-year-old Adam Fantilli is eligible again, but he's content to have graduated to permanent NHL residency — even if his Blue Jackets are slipping farther out of the playoff race.

"It's an honour and you're extremely excited to do it. But to be honest with you, I want to be here. I want to be getting NHL reps. I want to be learning how to be a pro more and more every day. So, here's where I want to be," the Nobleton, Ont. native said during his spin through Toronto.

"Playing in front of crowds like that, especially getting to play in Canada, that was a lot of fun in Halifax. Those fans were amazing, and they made it so enjoyable. And being in those types of situations, whether it's Big Ten championships, Frozen Four championships, the world championships, world juniors, all that stuff goes toward getting to where you want to be and preparing you."

A GTA kid "brainwashed" into becoming a Bruins fan by his dad, Giuliano, Fantilli was a Scotiabank Arena regular growing up: Leafs-Bruins games, Raptors games, even the 2015 world junior championship, when Connor McDavid led the country to gold.

"I used to only ever come when the Bruins were playing Toronto, so it was always awesome when I'd leave and the B's won. I was just smiling the whole way home on the subway, and everybody was all upset," Fantilli says, devilishly.

Does he remember the Leafs' 4-1 lead in Game 7, 2013?

Fantilli lights up: "[My dad and I] were driving home from practice, and we heard everything that was going on. So, we pulled over, went into a Montana's and just watched the rest of the game — and it was amazing."

Because of his Toronto ties, and his Italian family's do-it-up-big sense of occasion, the centreman secured well over 100 tickets for his Scotiabank Arena NHL debut Thursday. Many of the kid's supporters were still choking a couple aisles of the lower bowl 30 minutes after the buzzer, snapping photos and celebrating the Jackets' hairy OT win.

Easily the largest mob of support I've seen for a single player at a regular-season game.

"Family, friends, people I used to go to school with, coaches, trainers... anybody pretty much [was] welcome to come," Fantilli explained. "People that you love and contributed to realizing this dream."

The dusty joke when a player grabs extra tickets is that he's playing for free that night.

"No, no," coach Pascal Vincent said. "It's costing him money."

4. Of the 30 years Vincent has been coaching hockey, 22 or 23, he figures, have been spent as a head coach at the amateur or minor pro levels. So, the actual hockey part of suddenly getting the Jackets gig (a swift response to Mike Babcock's dismissal) is no big deal.

It's all the extra responsibilities and requests of a bench boss in the Show that have taken him aback.

"The one thing I didn't know about the NHL is learning to say no. You get pulled in different directions by different people all the time," Vincent explains. "It's the media, the marketing [department], the team, the players, management, assistant coaches... at the end of the day, I have to do my job. And I need to understand the big picture — and I do. But the NHL is a different animal.

"The management of the people, that's one of my strengths. But the time it takes to do the full job description of a head coach, there's a lot of things that are being asked that are time-consuming, and it has to be done. So, management of my personal time was an adjustment."

5. The original All-Star Game draft — remember 2011, when Phil Kessel was the final pick? — was a Shanahan concept.

Shanahan worked as a VP with the league at the time. The NHL liked his idea but didn't know how to produce it, so they called in Steve Mayer — then a network TV man, now the NHL's chief content officer — as an outside producer.

Before resurrecting the popular player draft to form the 2024 all-star teams, Mayer went into the archives and watched the old drafts — recall Alex Ovechkin angling for a free car? — and wondered why the NHL ever stopped such a fun format.

It irks the exec to hear a members of a younger generation think the NHL is now copying the idea from the NBA.

"Gotta tell you, they are great TV," Mayer says. "Man, if this was the era of social media back then, these clips would have went so viral. I mean, some of the things the players said and how they cut on each other, and then the whole Ovechkin thing, it was really good stuff."

When February's upcoming All-Star Game was awarded to Toronto, Shanahan half-jokingly turned to Mayer and said: "You gonna bring back the draft? We should bring back the draft!"

Once again, Shanahan got the ball rolling. Commissioner Gary Bettman approved.

There's a twist. Four celebrity captains will partner with the player captains to pick the teams. And no one will face the Kessel booby prize of being last pick.

OK. So, how do the final players get divvyed up?

"Wait till you see," Mayer smiles. "I hope when we talk after Thursday night, you're like, 'That was cool.'"

6. Mayer is also the point man executing June's draft at the Sphere in Las Vegas and takes pride in the NHL outracing UFC (coming September) to be the first sports event held inside the technological wonder.

He's heading to the Sphere's production headquarters in Burbank, Calif., to learn how it works and what bells and whistles can be taken advantage of for the event.

"The biggest challenge? It's gotta be really good," says Mayer, a kid in a $2.3-billion candy store. "You could be in every arena in the world, you could go to theatres. This is just a very different approach. It's wild."

Even the simple mock drawings of the visual execution the NHL would like to pull off at the Sphere, Mayer says, got everyone excited at the board of governors meeting.

7. Long live the poke check!

If skaters can take vary their shootout tactics, goalies should be able to as well.

8. Last time the Blues hired an interim head coach, he won the Stanley Cup, was named a finalist for the Jack Adams Award, and worked more than four more seasons.

Point is, just because AHL callup Drew Bannister is on job probation doesn't mean he can't shake the interim tag and make a go of this. Results speak volumes.

Gotta feel a little bad for Jordan Kyrou getting booed on home ice over his "no comment" comment. Hopefully, this can be a lesson for all involved.

Absolutely, the paying public has a right to boo. Also, we can forget that well-paid athletes are humans too. Clearly, that one stung.

P.S. When looking up Berube's coaching record, I discovered one of his supporters had vented frustration over his firing on Wikipedia:

9. Quote of the Week.

"Let's free the skate jersey." — Roberto Luongo, with a mic-drop moment to cap off a classy Ring of Honour speech that totally should've been a number retirement speech.

10. Jake McCabe is a straight-faced shooter, not the type to make a fuss over much in interviews. But the Leafs D-man does allow a smile when you ask what it's like to catch an opponent with an open-ice check as hard as the one he laid on the Rangers' Ryan Lindgren on Tuesday.

"It's a good feeling," McCabe says. "That's been part of my game for a long time. So anytime you catch a good, clean one, it's always good.

"Just a little momentum thing and kinda gives your guys a little bit of a boost. So, it's always a good thing for the game."

Builds credibility, too.

Tough teammate Ryan Reaves made a point to watch the replay: "Nice one. That fires me up. And I think for a second it kinda messes with the other bench a little bit. Like, 'Oh, man, they're comin'. Yeah, every time somebody lays somebody out on our team, I get fired up. I start yelling on the bench. I enjoy it."

Not unlike other big hitters, McCabe, 30, has been forced to defend himself as opponents retaliate over a thud. Clean or not.

He gets it and doesn't get upset over having to scuffle after a perfectly legal play. He's been on the defending-a-teammate side, too.

"I think it's always been like that. One of my very first games in the NHL, I hit somebody on Boston. I was young, 20 years old. Had stick up for myself after," McCabe shrugs. "Happened then, still happens now. So, it doesn't bother me."

Reaves agrees: "I don't think you have to answer for every single hit, but there's gonna be pretty big ones where you catch somebody, and I think that's just the respect part of the game."

Reaves, 36, is the rare active player who's been around long enough to remember life before the two-minute instigator penalty.

"Back then, we had to answer for a lot more. You didn't really have the option to answer or not. There was no instigator rule when I came in the league [in 2010]. So it was either answer, or you're getting jumped and you're gonna eat a couple," Reaves says.

"Now, you can lay somebody out and you can take a look and see who's coming at you. And if you don't like the opponent, you can keep your gloves on. So, I don't love that part of it. And I don't really agree with the instigator.

"Just the game evolving, I guess."

11. Wanna see Jacob Chychrun perk up during his first full (up-and-down) tour as an Ottawa Senator?

Ask him about what it's like to share a dressing room with Claude Giroux.

"G's the best, man. I love that guy," he says. "He's the ultimate competitor — whether it's on the ice, at a pool table, at a card game, everything. This guy wants to win everything he does, and it's contagious in this room. He's a big leader for us and a guy that brings guys into the fight with him. Someone we all look up to."

Chychrun and Giroux go head-to-head playing 13 on the team plane and billiards when it lands.

"I've gotten the best of him at the pool table. Card games, we're pretty even. And I've got the better of him at the dartboard, too. But we get some good battles going on. He's an incredible athlete, so he's pretty much good at everything," says Chychrun, who admires his teammate.

Giroux is still humming near a point-per-game pace despite turning 36 next month, and the defenceman credits the forward's off-ice work habits.

"You need that. Especially with today's game getting younger and younger and faster and faster, it's harder for guys to stay in the league a long time," Chychrun says. "He's thriving. So, it's just credit to him and his work ethic and compete level for sure."

12. For all the groaning about how difficult it is to make trades, in the three weeks or so leading up to the Dec. 20 roster freeze, we've seen several notable players dealt: Anthony Beauvillier, Nikita Zadorov, Eric Robinson, clean-shaven Robert Burtuzzo, Jack Studnicka, and Tomas Tatar.

There are still a few days to squeeze in more action.

For when the clock strikes midnight Wednesday through to Dec. 28, there will be no player movement allowed.

Legend has it, this rule was implemented so Elliotte Friedman could meet his family.