Laurence Gilman is the Leafs New Assistant General Manager

In what is becoming a bit of a tradition, the Leafs announced some pretty big news while I still driving in to work. Today’s news is that Laurence Gilman will be the new Assistant GM of the Leafs.

I want to start by thanking the Leafs for spelling out some of Gilman’s responsibilities in the press release, though I’m not sure how much of the surface this is scratching. It stands to reason that Gilman would become the Marlies GM, as he has previously held the AHL GM role for during his time with the Coyotes organization, though what he seems to be best known for is cap management and contract negotiations. Interesting that the Leafs are doubling down in this area with Gilman and Pridham, but this could be an area that Dubas sees himself as needing the most support, so if that’s the case good on him for doing that. How the Matthews, Marner, and Nylander contracts go will be critical for the long term success of this team.

Adding Gilman seems like something we should be excited about. Our friends over at Canucks Army have been making the case for Gilman as GM before, especially prior to Jim Benning, and they are a pretty smart group over there. (I’d suggest this post as a great way to familiarize yourself with Gilman.) Gilman was in the runnning for the Canes GM job, so this is probably a sign that Gilman may not be around for too long since he’s already looking to take that next step.

Another interesting aspect to Gilman is that he was a bit of an architect of the Vegas Golden Knights construction. If you have a subscription to The Athletic, I’d also recommend this article on Gilman which discusses his entire career, but particularly focus on the Vegas aspect which may become the new favourite team construction model to emulate.

While Gilman doesn’t have “played the game” credibility, he’s been around the NHL for a while and the experience he brings to the role will be an asset. I’m going out on a limb here and saying we all should feel very good about this.

I’m sure we’ll have a lot more on what the Dubas era front office is going to look like, but for now we can enjoy the fact that he’s quickly building his team and that he’s not going to be sitting at the draft table by himself.

We haven’t seen anyone with Hunter’s area of expertise come into the fold yet, but it’s safe to say that is more likely to play out after the draft, as Dubas will be making his 2018 draft decisions on the information the organization has already collected.