Former Leafs GM rips Kyle Dubas for his handling of negotiations with Shanahan, MLSE

"Basically, I told Richard Peddie what I thought we should do, he might say think about this, think about that, but basically, he was the conduit to ownership. It was simpler when I was there... It seems to me, that you had a process they were going through there, moving towards an extension. That much was clear. Right up until 2 or 3 days before, they had extensive discussions with Kyle's agent and with Shanny, so they were moving towards an agreement and then it went off the rails." - Burke on negotiations between Dubas and Shanahan

"I think right there, the math changes. If you're a team President, right there the math changes. One of the guys who works for you - your right hand man, the most important guy in the organization just told you 'I'm not sure I want to come back'.. and then it went on and they said they exchanged proposals and that put 2 new things on the table.. one is new terms of employment and terms of money, apparently, and the 2nd is a new reporting scheme that will effect the balance of power.. I'll tell you from experience, if you're in the last year of your contract and you just got beaten in a playoff series that everyone expected you would win and you want to discuss that after you had lengthy discussions framing these issues... you wanna put 2 new issues on the table... 'oh, by the way - I know we've gone down the road a long ways, but I want to talk about power and I want to talk about money..' that's really a problem. That's a huge problem and even if it's not a problem for Shanny, which it would be, it would be a problem for your owners." - Burke on Shanahan and MLSE being right to fire Kyle Dubas