Breaking: Dubas spotted personally scouting two rival teams on Sunday night.

This is potentially a big development for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and possibly for one of the two other teams involved in this report. 

According to a breaking news report from NHL Numbers, Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas has been spotted in New York. Specifically the Leafs GM is on hand at Madison Square Garden to watch the New York Rangers take on the Calgary Flames and given the current talk around the Maple Leafs organization this has raised a ton of eyebrows around the National Hockey League.

Just earlier today we touched on a very interesting report from Sportsnet insider Chris Johnston regarding the ongoing battle between the Toronto Maple Leafs and forward William Nylander. As many fans know Dubas visited Nylander in Switzerland this week to discuss the ongoing contract battle between the two sides and that meeting seems to have produced very little results for the Leafs. In fact according to the latest report from Johnston is sounds like the possibility of signing Nylander to a long term contract is now completely off the table.

From Johnston:

The list of possible outcomes has been whittled down in the 118 days since Kyle Dubas met with Nylander’s agent, Lewis Gross, at the NHL draft in Dallas and travelled to Zurich to speak directly with the player this week.

Option B isn’t in the cards. There is no long-term contract coming here. The Leafs can’t find an AAV that both fits in with their long-term cap projections and is large enough to entice Nylander to sign for six, seven or eight years at this time.

Johnston believes that there remain two realistic options for the Leafs at this stage of the game, either sign Nylander to a short term bridge deal that will land you in the same scenario in a few short years, or accept the fact that you overestimated your ability to get Nylander, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and John Tavares all signed to long term deals and seek to trade young William Nylander. To be clear it sounds like Johnston believes that both the Leafs and Nylander would prefer to find a solution where both sides agree on a new contract but Johnston also openly wondered how long it would take for the Leafs to shift their focus from working on a bridge deal, to simply seeking a trade that could potentially provide them a greater benefit. 

The fact that Dubas is now openly, and personally, scouting to rival franchises in New York on a Sunday night could simply be a giant coincidence or it could be a sign that Dubas has finally realized that this deal simply isn't going to get done at a reasonable number. The Leafs have reportedly been looking to bolster their depth on the blue line and finding a potential trade destination for Nylander could be a solution to that problem, if not an ideal one. 

Now to be clear Dubas could be at the game for an entirely unrelated reason, and could in fact be scouting for a trade that has nothing to do with William Nylander, but the timing certainly seems like a big coincidence to say the least.