The goaltending, the D group, and the bottom six forward group were all largely hot trash during Dubas’ tenure. All of those components are vitally important to winning playoff hockey. He simply was not able to effectively round out his roster. Tree has been able to address these areas.
Keefe is an X’s and O’s coach obsessive with details but whose lack of composure in difficult moments was palpable which bled into the team. Berube’s coaching style is simple and direct and he is clearly had a positive impact on the keeping the team more composed and focused. – Fifty
All over? The D core, starting goalie, attitude and bottom 6 have pretty much all changed. Leafs werent going anywhere with him and his boy Keefe. In fact, I believe Dubas would have most likely traded willy for E Karlsson had he been allowed to stick around (that was the rumour). I liked Dubas, he made some good trades, but this years leafs success has nothing to do with him.
Now the leafs could still choke it away, but they look like a much different team – Fake
I’ll address both of you in a single post.
1. Funny how Tree keeps getting praise for filling out the roster but he didn’t need to trade one of the ‘core 4’ as both of you claimed he would HAVE to do to fix the defense. Funny how a Dubas trade and a free agent signing by Tree really helped solidify arguably the leagues best shut down pair.
2. What do you mean Tree did all the work? Tree didn’t draft a single player on the team and the youngest two guys contributing consistently are Knies (on the top line) and Woll who was excellent during the season and Stoly was only really anointed the starting goalie in the last couple weeks. Let’s not act like Tree made some brilliant move here.
3. Fairly certain Nylander was traded by Fifty like a 100 times in the past couple off seasons as “the core 4 would never work!” or so I was told. Also Marner but both Dubas and Tree have stuck to the “core 4” and are seeing results.
4. We all agree on Keefe though. He needs some more seasoning in the NHL as a coach if he wants to see real success.
5. Dubas doesn’t go without his warts but let’s not act like he didn’t do anything to the current line up. If it was upto you two the core 4 wouldn’t be here and neither would Carlo or Laughton because if I recall it was said “don’t trade any firsts until they prove they deserve it” or was it “JT takes up too much cap this year to do anything ‘major’ so just run out the season and REALLY go for it next year.”
6. Leafs still have to get past the Panthers but they’ve shown they are certainly different and a large part of that is on Berube and his D core. OEL/Carlo/Tanev are all excellent grabs by Tree.