Changing of the Seasons in Toronto

TORONTO – Well, the Stanley Cup Finals are over.  Here’s what we can say: The Colorado Avalanche are your 2019-20 Stanley Cup Champions after the underdog Avalanche swept the heavily favoured Toronto Maple Leafs in four games.  Here’s what we can’t say: It was a hard-fought series.  Goaltender Darcy Kuemper stood on his head and did everything he could to stay in games.  The Leafs dynamic duo of Dylan Larkin and Phil Kessel were difference makers.

The finger pointing began after Game 1 of the series when the Leafs lost handedly at home.  Kuemper, the Leafs star free agent addition over the past summer and who was a brick wall in the first three series, fell apart at the seams and never really seemed to recover.  It didn’t help that the Leafs couldn’t solve Avalanche goaltender Thomas Greiss until Game 4 when then pushed it to overtime, but it was too little too late to save face and the series.

Now that the series is done, the finger pointing continues as people, Leaf fans all around are trying to figure out what went wrong.  How did an Eastern Conference winning team fall on its face when all the chips were down?  How did a veteran roster loaded with experience and poise fail to win even a single game on the biggest stage of them all?  Now, its well known that the Stanley Cup is one of the hardest trophies to win, but for a team seemingly built to withstand the playoff grind collapses as the Leafs did?  How does that happen?

Blame is being thrown all around, from Larkin not performing when it matters, to the Defence being too slow, to head coach Jared Bednar not adapting quick enough to the Avalanche’s strategies, but it seems that according to Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the blame has fallen solely on General Manager Ron Dubin.  In fact, mere hours after the Leafs skated off the ice, heads hung in defeat as the Avalanche organization flooded the ice in celebration, the MLSE released a statement announcing the shocking release of Ron Dubin from the organization. 

The move is a complete surprised as Dubin has led the Leafs to the Stanley Cup Finals in three of the last four years, winning it all in 2018.  Viewed as a savior to the team after he resurrected it from obscurity when he was hired on in 2011, Dubin made move after move to deepen the team and make it competitive.  His release or firing comes unexpectedly and unprecedented for someone with so much recent success. 

So now that the first stone has been cast in the aftermath of the Leafs meltdown, we are left with more questions than before: Who will be able to step into the Manager position and will they be able to get out from the shadow that Dubin has left on the organization?  Where will Dubin end up in the league, if he does decide to come back?  Only time will allow us to find the answers to these questions and more.