Kyle Dubas Admits To "Biggest Mistake" He Made While With the Maple Leafs

Kyle Dubas is now well into his second offseason as GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins, but in a recent interview for a new book by Craig Custance of The Athletic, Dubas opened up about his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs and admitted to his "biggest mistake" with the team. And, you guessed it, it all revolved around the contracts surrounding John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Auston Matthews.

The biggest mistake I think I’ve made in my whole time here has been not taking care of the three incumbent contracts. Nylander was up, Marner and Matthews could have been done on July 1 extensions.

The thing I learned was once we signed John (Tavares) to the ($11 million AAV) we did, it lifted the lid on the entire ceiling.

The contract issues surrounding the Core Four have long been at the root of what ails the Maple Leafs, as they simply haven't had a balanced salary structure and/or the cap space available to add properly around them. And once Tavares landed his $11M cap hit when he signed on July 1st, 2018, as Dubas noted, the upper limits on deals for the other three shot up. The Leafs have been cap-strung ever since.

But there was also another voice in Custance's book coming to Dubas's defense. Darryl Belfry, a player development consultant with the Leafs during that period, insists that COVID-19 and the resulting flat cap fallout was really to blame, and Dubas was a victim of that.

“What would the cap be, $90 million?” Belfry asks rhetorically. “Kyle would never say it, but I will. You have a world shut down, it’s a flat cap for multiple years and you’re stuck holding the bag on a projection. You didn’t miscalculate, it’s an act of nature that beat you.”

It's all current Leafs GM Brad Treliving's problem now, as he tries to navigate the future for the Leafs, with Marner and Tavares both entering the final years of their contract, each with full no-movement clauses.

And as for Dubas, he's in the midst of deciding on what Sidney Crosby's next contract will look like in Pittsburgh.