After Brian was relieved of his duties, Dave
Nonis was the runner-up as a replacement. He
was hired on January 9, 2013. | believe that Nonis
should have never been offered the job because
he has never managed in a _ hockey-crazed
atmosphere. The only benefit | will give him is the
fact that he has been Burke's right hand man and
could have learned a few things him. The Maple
Leafs are the center of attention lately, for all the
wrong reasons. An Original Six franchise that has
repeatedly failed to make the playoffs over the last
decade had just acquired an inexperienced shadow
walker. When you break down his run as GM of the
Canucks and the Leafs, both times he was handed
a playoff destined team that Burke had already
molded. So what makes Dave Nonis so bad?
Maybe it’s the fact that he has a knack for signing
players to overpriced, multi-year deals. Signing
David Clarkson to a 7 year deal worth $5.25 million
per year is one example. This deal hurts the most
because David was coming off his best season with
the New Jersey Devils before Nonis had signed him
with the hopes he would continue the trend... but
that never happened. He went from scoring thirty
goals a season to five. | blame Dave Nonis for this
signing because he put Clarkson in a role that he
wasn't accustomed to.

Kyle Dubas, 28, is currently the Assistant
General Manager of Toronto. | think he would be
a great candidate to replace Dave Nonis because
he is young, and already had success with the
OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. At the age of
11, he was the stick boy for the Sault Ste. Marie
Greyhounds, and by the age of 14 he was the
hockey operations assistant. He dipped his toes
in scouting while he was attending university for
sports management to later become the GM. To
me, this is one heck of a dedicated man. The real
characteristic that stands out to me is his tick for
stats-analysis. Why? Because computers never lie,
that’s why. Billy Beane, the GM of MLB’s Oakland
Athletics, was highly criticized when he and his
assistant created a team built strictly off stats. The
A’s ended up 24th out of 30 in team salary, while
finishing the season with the fifth best record. Not to
mention the Athletics were the first team in a century
to win 20 consecutive games the same season. We
can just hope that Dubas is capable of recreating

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that type of a scenario. The only way to tell is to
wait and see, but just for the sake of reassurance,
within three years he brought the Greyhounds
from the bottom of the OHL’s West Division to the
top.

The disappointment of giving up on Brian
Burke and hiring the incompetent Dave Nonis
both left me questioning the intelligence of upper
management, but Dubas offers some light at the
end ofthe tunnel. Brian Burke is currently employed
with the Calgary Flames, and Phil Kessel has
become one of the league’s top scorers since the
controversy of being an American, playing for a
Canadian-Proud franchise. Although the Leafs
are still one of the leagues laughing stocks, | will
always be there through the thick and thin. It has
been a bumpy ten years being a fan of Toronto.
| will not be “that guy” at the game and throw
my favorite jersey over the glass, but | do have
the ability to point fingers, curse at the television
screen, and shake my head at the unrealistic trade
that never happened. Eventually | will witness the
Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup—even if |
have to watch it from 1967.

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