Kyle Dubas out in Toronto and the Arizona Coyotes’ Twitter account is unhinged: Around the League

It is with great sadness and regret that we announce that the biggest news of the day comes from Maple Leaf land.

After five seasons as the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager, Kyle Dubas won’t be returning to the organization next season.

“I would like to thank Kyle for his unwavering dedication over these last nine seasons with the organization, including his last five as general manager,” team president Brendan Shanahan said in a statement. “Kyle fostered a great culture within our dressing room and staff, and consistently pushed to make our team better season over season. We wish Kyle and his family the best moving forward and thank him for his valuable contributions.”

Dubas took over for Lou Lamoriello as GM following the 2017-18 season after serving as assistant GM since 2014-15. The club made the playoffs in each of Dubas’ five seasons at the helm and – somehow notably — made it out of the first for the first time since the 2003-04 season during this year’s postseason when the beat the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Toronto may want to look long and hard at John Weisbrod and Jim Benning, as the duo oversaw more playoff series victories while at the helm of the Canucks than Dubas did as general manager of the Leafs. Makes you think.

Following the referendum earlier this week where residents voted resoundingly against the Arizona Coyotes building a $2.1 entertainment district in Tempe, the organization has remained steadfast in their desire to remain in Arizona and find a new home somewhere else. And they’re going to Twitter for help.

No, that poll question tweet is not from the Port Moody Panthers’ Twitter account or some other Junior B team. No, it’s not a troll or parody account, either.

That right there folks is a poll from the official Arizona Coyotes Twitter account asking the ”Pack” which city in Arizona they should build their new home arena in. Scottsdale, who like most cities in Arizona, seem like they don’t want a pro hockey team in town, leads the vote with nearly 70% at the time of this writing.

But the chaos didn’t stop at the Twitter poll.

The Coyotes are now pulling an “if this gets X number of likes, we’ll do this,” the social media strategy that was most popular in the mid-late 2010s. We have no idea where this is going to go.

But it’s not just a new home city and arena that the Coyotes are looking for. The Coyotes are looking for a new social media manager, and it’s unclear if they’re just allowing the old manager – who we have to assume is the very definition of disgruntled – to run the account, or if they’ve simply been hacked but have let go of everyone in the organization capable of getting that message out to the general public.

Nonetheless, the Coyotes aren’t going down without a fight. If they can put up half the fight that their Twitter account is putting up in what we assume are numbered days, they’ll be just fine.

We’ll update this story if and when that bizarre tweet actually gets 20,000 likes.

UPDATE: Alright, it’s just a bait link that takes you to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” on a 10 hour loop. We wish we were kidding.