TRAIKOS: What if the Maple Leafs had pushed Kyle Dubas — and not Lou Lamoriello — out the door?

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Now that the initial shock has worn off, where do we even start with this latest collapse from the Toronto Maple Leafs?

How about by looking in the rearview mirror.

Forget about what this team might have done against the Montreal Canadiens had John Tavares not been injured in Game 1 or had Jake Muzzin been healthy for Game 7. Instead, think about where the Leafs would be right now had they never pushed Lou Lamoriello out the door to make room for Kyle Dubas.

In hindsight, that might have been a far bigger blunder than the Rasmus Sandin turnovers in Game 5 or the Alex Galchenyuk giveaway in Game 6.

What would the Leafs look like today had they stayed the course with a Hall of Fame general manager and not handed over the keys to someone who had never run an NHL team? What if they didn’t go all-in with analytics? What if they had someone who used his eyes and years of experience — rather than a calculator — to construct a contender?

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What if Lamoriello never left three years ago? Why did he, anyway?

It seems so long ago now, but Lamoriello was the guy who started all of this. He was the culture-changer. The old-school GM who came in when the Leafs were terrible and immediately forced everyone to shave their beards and then, when the team got good, supposedly became too old and too old-fashioned to do the job anymore. So he went to New York, where he inherited a far-less talented team than he had in Toronto and transformed it into a legit Stanley Cup contender.

Three years later, it appears the Leafs pushed the wrong guy out.

Had the Leafs chosen Lamoriello over Dubas — or even kept both of them — where would this team be today? Would Mike Babcock still be coaching? Further to that, would his hard-line approach have turned Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner into the second coming of Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg — rather than some underachieving version of Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau?

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Would William Nylander still be sitting out in Sweden because he demanded more money? If so, would that have had a domino effect on how much Marner and Matthews were then paid as free agents? Would Toronto have even bothered to sign Tavares, a decision that made the roster too top-heavy? Or would the money be used to help build a more balanced lineup?

Would this year’s Leafs, who don’t play the way that Lamoriello likes his teams to play, still have stubbed their toe in the playoffs? Or would they be on their way to winning a Stanley Cup?

At the very least, would they be in the second round?

It’s quite possible. After all, Lamoriello has achieved far more with far less during his time on Long Island. The numbers don’t lie. In the past three seasons, the Islanders and Leafs have fairly identical records. With Lamoriello running things, New York has gone 115-67-24. During that same span, Toronto is 117-67- 24. But it’s the playoffs where the teams differ.

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The Islanders, who went to the conference final last year and are tied 1-1 in their second-round series against the Boston Bruins, have won four playoff rounds in the past three years. The Leafs have won zero.

This isn’t meant to criticize all that Dubas has done. Despite how it all ended this year, there was a lot to like about how he adapted and reconstructed the roster after failing against Columbus in last year’s play-in series.

There were calls for the Leafs to be grittier, so Dubas acquired Wayne Simmonds and Zach Bogosian. They lacked experience, so he signed Joe Thornton. They wanted depth for the playoffs, so he traded a first-round pick for Nick Foligno and took a chance on Alex Galchenyuk. He swapped out Tyson Barrie for TJ Brodie, hired someone new to run the power play.

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Those moves earned Dubas praise — here and elsewhere — for finally loading up with the kind of intangibles that are the staple of any Cup-contending team. This was a team that ran away with the North Division and tied Minnesota and Edmonton with the eighth-most wins in the NHL. They were far better defensively than they had been in years.

And yet, something was still missing. Something that Dubas’ spreadsheets and algorithms couldn’t detect, something that didn’t rear its ugly head until midway through the first round of the playoffs.

It wasn’t that the Leafs didn’t have the best or more expensive players. It was that they didn’t have the right players. They chose creativity over character. Ultimately, they chose regular-season success over playoff success.

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They lacked heart. And passion. And that team-first mentality Lamoriello has preached long and hard over his career, about how the logo on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back.

The Leafs have three players who are each making more than $10 million. They had the No. 1 goal scorer, another ranked in the top five in points and another among the top 25. The Islanders did not have anyone ranked among the top 40 in scoring this year. No one makes more than $7 million.

Lamoriello builds his team from the net out. He places an emphasis on having a strong defence. He wants four lines that are practically interchangeable.

Dubas has gone in another direction. The whiz kid who likes to act like he’s smarter than everyone else went all-in with skill, scoring and individuality. He invested more than $40 million in his top-four forwards and had a fourth line that was making the league minimum. He hired a coach who let the kids choose their linemates and stay on the ice for longer than a stranger at a drop-in game of shinny.

Three years and three first-round exits later, it’s not difficult to see which managerial style has been more effective.

mtraikos@postmedia.com

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