The Toronto Maple Leafs fired general manager Kyle Dubas on Friday, just a week after the team’s five-game elimination to the Florida Panthers in the second round. Despite the questions that had surrounded Dubas’ status all year, Leafs president and alternate governor Brendan Shanahan indicated that his decision was made in the span of around four days and that the team had intended to bring Dubas back until after his end-of-season press conference.

NHL Insiders have been digging to try and figure out what happened to cause Shanahan’s about-face. It seems like a power struggle between Dubas and Shanahan was at least partially to blame for the split, and Dubas’ departure has created larger uncertainty within the organization.

“I texted somebody I know at MLSE on Sunday morning,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts Podcast. “I said, ‘How’s it going there?’ and he said, ‘It’s like Game of Thrones.'”

Shanahan offered his side of the story in a surprisingly detailed press conference on Friday. Though the parties were working on a contract extension, Dubas publicly expressed doubts about returning at his end-of-season media availability, citing stress to his family. Dubas ultimately decided that he wanted to stay, per Shanahan. However, Shanahan chose not to extend him. He explained that the press conference, combined with a new proposed contract from Dubas’ agent and an email he sent to Shanahan on Thursday evening, convinced Shanahan to let Dubas go.

Dubas has so far declined to comment publicly, but further investigation around the league implies that there’s more than one side to the story. Here’s what a few league insiders had to say about the complex situation:

The Athletic’s James Mirtle reported that the two had clashed over potential moves, with Shanahan blocking transactions Dubas wanted to make.

Shanahan and Dubas had been at odds for a while. On Friday, more details emerged on that front. Multiple sources close to the team said that Shanahan had blocked transactions that Dubas wanted to make at key points in the past several seasons, creating frustration in parts of the management group. Shanahan had also at times dictated certain moves he wanted made that Dubas didn’t agree with.

The president, as per his place in the hierarchy, typically won out in those battles. And, in some cases, the moves that weren’t made could have improved the Leafs’ ability to advance further in the playoffs.

Though other factors contributed, Mirtle believes that struggle contributed towards Shanahan’s decision, writing, “Dubas’ desire for greater autonomy from Shanahan is believed to have been one of the untold reasons for how things ultimately played out.”

The Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli also emphasized the impact of Dubas and Shanahan’s relationship. On an episode of his podcast The DFO Rundown, he suggested that Shanahan’s unusual press conference indicated a larger breakdown between the two.

So in fifteen-plus years of covering the NHL on a daily, full-time basis, I have never seen a press conference like that, where someone gets slapped on their way out. To me, I think it speaks to how it all went down and the tone and tenor of what was relayed to the public gave you some sort of insight into what happened behind the scenes, even though they didn’t spell it out.

My belief is that this wasn’t a financial leverage play that bothered the Toronto Maple Leafs…I think you could tell, watching that, at least what I believe happened behind the scenes is that Kyle Dubas made a push to get Brendan Shanahan out of hockey operations and decision-making. That he wanted complete and full autonomy and that this was a sort of power struggle that took place.

I mean, how else do you explain the reaction?

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman took a somewhat more restrained position. On the 32 Thoughts Podcast, he noted that sources had broken into factions, with different people offering different sides of the story.

Everybody who’s pro-Dubas is going hard after Shanahan and everybody who’s pro-Shanahan is saying, “look, he told you the way it all unfolded.”

And at some point in time we’re going to get, especially since Dubas hasn’t spoken yet, we’re going to get more of a winding narrative of how this got here. But right now, the smear jobs are all on everywhere…This isn’t the last of this that we’ve heard

Friedman also said that a power struggle was partially to blame, but his reporting indicated that Dubas intended to simplify the Leafs’ reporting structure without cutting Shanahan out entirely.

You know what’s interesting to me is: you know me, Jeff, I try to figure out, [to] the best possible ability that I can what actually happened. And I know obviously we’re not there yet. But the one thing that really, I talked about on Saturday night that’s important here is that there definitely was a feeling from Dubas that the current reporting structure didn’t work.

It goes Dubas, Shanahan, Board. Board thinks about it, goes back to Shanahan, and goes back to Dubas. Now I heard about this after we taped the podcast on Friday and I worked on it all day Saturday.

Initially what I heard was that Dubas tried to cut Shanahan out, he wanted to report directly. I spoke to some people who I would consider pro-Dubas people and even not-so-much-Dubas people. And they told me that they did not believe that was true. But they do think that Dubas did try to use the word I used, which was “streamline.”

He thought that they could not get things done quick enough. And some of the decisions that they’re going to have to make this summer, he believed that the way that their reporting worked, it wasn’t going to get done. First of all, he was worried that things were going to get out, he was worried that decisions could not be made quick enough, and he proposed that.

I don’t know exactly how well it was worded, but in addition to everything that Shanahan spelled out publicly, people told me that that particular request was not well-received. And after, when they heard that Dubas had kind of proposed this, they were not surprised that things ended up the way that they did.

It looks like the messy end to Dubas’ tenure has sowed chaos within the organization as a whole. Former Leaf Jason Spezza, who worked closely with Dubas, reportedly resigned from his front-office position on the same day as the firing, and it’s unlikely that he’ll be the last to go. Friedman reported that most of the organization was “stunned” by Friday’s news, and rumors continue to come out of the usually tight-lipped team.

Whatever the case is, there’s obviously some damage inside the organization. I think one of the things that’s going to happen here is, the way the front office is constructed, does Shanahan feel it can continue to do good work as a united front, or does he feel that, “I know MLSE. I know the people who work there. I know the way it runs. They won’t like the kind of stuff that came out this weekend.”

As a reporter, I’ve got no problem with it. I’m chasing it the same everyone else does, however I know the way it’s going to be reacted to. I think that to me is going to be the question is, do we have a situation where the Leafs say, “based on what we saw come out this weekend, we’re going to have to make more changes because this is not going to work.”

The complicated circumstances surrounding Dubas’ firing have turned a personnel decision into something of a soap opera. Between the firing itself and the subsequent reactions, last week’s events could have an interesting effect on the long-term future of the team.

Dubas’ own future is also up in the air. Friedman reported that the Pittsburgh Penguins have gotten permission to interview Dubas for their vacant GM position. Though Dubas said in his end-of-season interview that he wouldn’t take a job elsewhere in the league next season, that was before Shanahan’s sudden reversal. If he decides to go elsewhere, he’ll quickly become one of the most coveted candidates on the market.

It’s clear that whatever happened in Toronto was messier than first imagined. We can’t know for sure what went down, but it looks like Dubas and Shanahan clashed over autonomy, with neither willing to relinquish the final say.

I, for one, can’t wait to read the inevitable tell-all memoir.

10:30 am update: Dubas released a statement saying “I will not get into the specifics of what I consider to be reasonable and consistent but private discussions”, adding “the organization, as is their right to do, decided to go in a different direction.”

onward. pic.twitter.com/kHlCfe8Q0a

— Kyle Dubas (@kyledubas) May 23, 2023