How Kyle Dubas reshaped the Maple Leafs in Seattle. And why the trade deadline might be busy again

What will the Leafs show between now and March 8? A rental seems like madness, but acquiring players with term could work.

With pressure building to break through in the playoffs, former Toronto general manager Kyle Dubas went to work on the trade market the last time the Maple Leafs played in Seattle.

SEATTLE—The last time the Maple Leafs were here, Kyle Dubas was standing on the press box catwalk between periods, ready to move. That night, Auston Matthews potted a couple in a year where injuries would reduce him to a mere 40-goal scorer, but the team was good enough that it didn’t matter as much as it could. So the general manager had decided to invest.

“Gotta go,” Dubas said, ducking back into his box. “I have to make a trade.”

He traded first-round and second-round draft picks for defenceman Jake McCabe and forward Sam Lafferty that night. He had already acquired Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari; the next day, still in Seattle, he sent out Rasmus Sandin and Pierre Engvall and a third-round pick for Luke Schenn and Erik Gustafsson, and a Boston first. The Leafs wanted heightened competitiveness, a centre who could bump John Tavares to the wing and puck-moving defencemen. They patched their few patchable holes.

“I wouldn’t say that it feels (like) pressure,” said Dubas. “You feel a duty in this job to do everything you can to help the group of people that are part of it, the staff and the players.”

Eleven months later, Dubas is running Pittsburgh after his emotional, franchise-changing split from team president Brendan Shanahan, despite Toronto’s first playoff series win since 2004. Matthews and William Nylander have new contracts after any talk of breaking up the Core Four was shelved. New general manager Brad Treliving kept coach Sheldon Keefe around, too.

But so far the biggest pieces Treliving acquired last summer to bolster that core haven’t panned out as well as the franchise had hoped. After a 6-4 loss to Vancouver Saturday night, with Seattle on tap Sunday: Tyler Bertuzzi had one goal in his past 25 games; Max Domi was scoring at half his career rate, and his lines have struggled defensively at times; and Ryan Reaves appeared to more or less be a healthy scratch, as he still hasn’t returned from the lower-body injury he suffered in mid-December. John Klingberg? He’s cap space now. Re-signing David Kämpf for four years as a fourth-line centre wasn’t looking great. Increasingly, the lines are failing to tread water.

The Leafs are trying, and it works in spurts. After falling behind 3-0 and 4-3 in Vancouver, they drew even twice; they just couldn’t sustain it. As McCabe said, “It’s not like we went away by any means. We competed all the way through to the final buzzer and you know, guys are battling their nuts off out there.”

Bertuzzi and Domi are one-year tryouts. T.J. Brodie and Mark Giordano, both struggling, are pending unrestricted free agents along with goaltender Ilya Samsonov. Past that, Tavares only has one year left after this season. This team isn’t in a fiscal straitjacket.

Raptors’ Bruce Brown has skills that NBA contenders want. Will he be dealt before the NBA trade deadline?

But the Leafs walked into Seattle with three points in their last six games and 18 in 19. That’s a 78-point pace over nearly a quarter of the season, with the toughest part of the schedule still to come. Including the late game in Seattle on Sunday night, they had 19 games left before the trade deadline arrives on March 8.

So, what will this team show between now and then? Either way, it feels like a rental would be madness, but acquiring players with term — like McCabe — could work, but giving up a first-rounder gets harder when you’re not picking in the high 20s anymore. The Leafs have become a more rush-dependent team, and have given up the ninth-most expected goals in the league at five-on-five. The defensive quality they had developed over years has slipped.

“I don’t think it’s on purpose,” says defenceman Morgan Rielly. “I think it’s just the nature of what’s going on with the team. You know, we’ve had possession, we’ve had opportunities to hold offensive-zone time. But there’s also periods of time where it’s not really going our way.