Habsy
Not playing around anymore.
Think it of from this angle, would you try to go for more money and autonomy without a backup plan? Would you Fred Flintstone something like this?I dunno, I honestly don't even put it at a 1% chance. I think he was so transparent.
He lagged on extending because he was expecting the Leafs to advance far this year and give him leverage. That didn't happen, so he insisted on doing the presser, where he showed ambivalence for the job and threw the family thing out there, and thinking Shanny would've been rattled by the thought of losing him, would cave to the upcoming demand for bigger dollars and maybe even the rumored autonomy stuff.
He came off as a complete moron, pissed off Shanny for taking advantage of all the time and space he gave him, and negated all of the family crap with the greedy demand. He did this all publicly.
So, for your theory to be correct here, Dubie would have deliberately wanted to air dirty laundry to the world, get himself fired from what most would consider the top GM job in the league where he'd been comfortable for years and had hired pretty much everyone around him, go back on his public statement that he won't show up somewhere else next week (why would he do that if he was hoping to get out and go to Pittsburgh??), all to uproot his family and go to Pittsburgh where he's locked into the old stars' contracts that he won't be able to trade, and I would wager for substantially less salary?
He didn't deliberately air laundry, he was all over the map because now he has to scramble into his backup plan. I would think as you do if it wasn't for the constant PR releases with something about wow we were lucky. With everything going on in the world you can't believe that Pittsburgh had the plan and Kyle knew "you know, should anything happen, call us". Don't assume this was all Kyle, he pulled a Greg in front of congress (succession) basically.