ATLTimekeeper wrote:Well, like I said, he assembled this team with the best players already in place. He adjusted, or was forced to concede. Doesn't really matter to me other than he wasted opportunities. 9 UFAs on this roster with not much to spend and Matthews/Nylanders UFA year just one season away. Their starting goalie is RFA. There are 5 total picks in the first 4 rounds of the next 3 seasons. He's paid through the nose just to build this team, so I don't mind holding him accountable for the playoffs this year.
This Leafs team is at a stage where it actually makes sense to sacrifice some of the future to bring in players that fix real or perceived weaknesses in the lineup and I think Dubas this year has done a pretty damn good job of it. He brought in alot of toughness and guys with backbone who can play and O'Reilly has been awesome as a guy who has won it all and can help lead the team when the going gets tough.
He's upgraded the lineup for relatively speaking not giving up too much of the future. A fair number of picks went out the door, but as we've seen from Dubas and his team already, they're able to find promising prospects in later rounds of the draft and they're also able to look around in other leagues in the world to find players and prospects that can help the team so that the draft isn't their only source for new players.
A few years ago the Leafs organization had few good prospects in their system because of such poor drafting and now they have a number of pretty decent ones if not really good ones to look forward to in the next few years.
