At no point during the process did team president Brendan Shanahan or general manager Kyle Dubas allow themselves to believe that John Tavares would join the Maple Leafs — until they got the word from his camp on Saturday. “Any time any team talks to players, you see a general excitement about what you’re presenting,” said Shanahan. “We saw things we presented to him and the questions he asked us afterwards as positive signs. But as we all learn at different times, until it happens, until you have a contract signed, you really can’t get too excited.” The excitement around the team is palpable now. Tavares is a Maple Leaf, signed for seven years at $77 million U.S. A superstar added to a lineup of young studs coming home to play for the team he grew up loving. Here’s how it went down:The Stamkos lessonIn the aftermath of a lost 2015-16 season — one in which the Leafs finished dead last and earned the right to draft Auston Matthews first overall, team brass met with Lightning star Steven Stamkos in the hopes of luring the homegrown forward to Toronto as a free agent. Stamkos balked and re-signed with Tampa before July 1. Dubas was more on the sidelines for that meeting. It was more about money (potential sponsors) and fame (Stamkos’s place in the city) than it was about hockey. And hockey — winning in particular — is really all that matters to players.DUBAS: “For me the key was, we had to make this about hockey, nothing else, and what we do to take care of our players and their families and protecting them away from the rink and so on and so forth. And most notably it was about hockey. I didn’t think we needed to get into anything else about our program here at all. Just make it about hockey. That’s why he was going to come here in the end, and all the rest of the periphery stuff (for agents and others to) worry about.”TAVARES: “As similar as our situations are, t ...
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