The fine details are a little uncertain, as tends to be the case with this team. No one seems to know exactly when the meeting happened or who all was in the room.



But at some point, Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan sat down with both Lou Lamoriello and Kyle Dubas and laid out the succession plan.



Lamoriello, now 75, would be moving into another, less prominent role. Dubas, now 32, would become the Leafs GM.



One of the catalysts for that conversation was because other teams came sniffing around Shanahan’s wunderkind executive. The Colorado Avalanche offered Dubas a job running their hockey operations, which set off rumours last May that he was as good as gone.



He didn’t leave, however. Shanahan didn’t let him. Dubas had signed a new two-year deal months before that point, in large part because he had his first child on the way and his family was comfortable in the Greater Toronto Area. He also believed he would have an out if...