The Toronto Maple Leafs announced Friday that general manager Kyle Dubas will not return for the 2023-24 season. The announcement comes one week after the Leafs were eliminated by the Florida Panthers in Game Five of the second round.
Dubas has been the Leafs’ GM since 2018, having previously served four years as an assistant general manager with the organization. His contract will expire on June 30th.
The club has decided to part ways with General Manager Kyle Dubas
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) May 19, 2023
“I would like to thank Kyle for his unwavering dedication over these last nine seasons with the organization, including his last five as General Manager,” Leafs president and alternate governor Brendan Shanahan said in a statement. “Kyle fostered a great culture within our dressing room and staff, and consistently pushed to make our team better season over season. We wish Kyle and his family the best moving forward and thank him for his valuable contributions.”
Dubas’ status has been a question mark for the Leafs all season. Despite significant success in the regular season (going 221-109-42 over Dubas’ tenure), the Leafs have struggled in the playoffs, losing in the first round for six consecutive years from 2017 to 2022 (including a loss in the 2020 Qualifying Round). Going into the final year of his contract, the team chose not to offer Dubas an extension. The Leafs would go on to win their first playoff series in 19 years against the Tampa Bay Lightning, only to go down 3-0 against the Florida Panthers and lose in Game Five.
Rumors about Dubas’ departure grew larger after his end-of-season media availability on Monday. He expressed that the season had taken a significant toll on his family and he was uncertain whether he would return.
“I’ve had a good long relationship here with Brendan [Shanahan] and the owners,” Dubas said. “I’ll speak to them in the coming days, but probably more importantly speak to my wife Shannon and our family tonight and tomorrow and see where we’re at as a family and how we want to proceed with everything.
“This has been-just in learning the past couple of days-has been a very taxing year on them, and that’s obviously very important to me. We’ll go through all that and we’ll all make our decisions and roll from there.”
Despite suggestions that he could take a job with another NHL team (particularly the Penguins, who cleaned house last month after missing the playoffs), Dubas later added that he did not plan to work elsewhere in the league.
“What I would say is that I definitely don’t have it in me to go anywhere else,” he said Monday. “So it’ll either be here or it’ll be taking time to recalibrate, reflect on the seasons here, but you won’t see me next week pop up elsewhere. I can’t put [my family] through that after this year.”
The Leafs and their next general manager will have critical decisions to make this offseason. Dubas expressed a willingness to trade one of the team’s “core four” (Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and William Nylander) in his end-of-season interview, and it’s very possible the next GM will feel similarly. The team has 10 UFAs with expiring deals, Ilya Samsonov is an arbitration-eligible RFA, and superstar Auston Matthews has only one more year on his contract. The Leafs may also consider replacing Sheldon Keefe, who Dubas hired as head coach in 2019.
Read the full press release below:
Maple Leafs Announce Dubas Will Not Return As General Manager
Brendan Shanahan, President and Alternate Governor of the Toronto Maple Leafs, announced today that the club has decided to part ways with General Manager Kyle Dubas. Dubas’s contract is set to expire on June 30 and he will not return as Toronto’s General Manager next season.
“I would like to thank Kyle for his unwavering dedication over these last nine seasons with the organization, including his last five as General Manager. Kyle fostered a great culture within our dressing room and staff, and consistently pushed to make our team better season over season. We wish Kyle and his family the best moving forward and thank him for his valuable contributions.”
