Brian Burke takes sides in Brendan Shanahan-Kyle Dubas split

You just knew that former Toronto Maple Leafs general manger Brian Burke would offer his thoughts on how the entire ordeal between team president Brendan Shanahan and now-former general manager Kyle Dubas went. 

Burke already voiced his view that if one of the "Core 4" forwards for the Leafs had to be traded, that he would make the call to part ways with William Nylander. And now, he's voicing his view on exactly who was right and who was wrong in the situation that ultimately saw Dubas terminated by Shanahan after the latter felt the former wasn't fully committed to the job owing to comments he made during his season-ending press conference. 

In short, Burke appears to be fully on team Shanny in this situation.

"Basically, I told (former president and CEO of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment) 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," Burke said on the negotiations between Dubas and Shanahan. "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 then went on to state his view that Dubas' press conference in which he openly appeared less than 100% sure he wanted to remain in his current job as well as the alleged counter offer from Dubas' camp to the Leafs reportedly requesting more money and autonomy was what did him in.

"I think right there, the math changes," Burke said. "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.