Friday marked a big day for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it had nothing to do with the team playing in the postseason. Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan ushered in a new -- and radical -- era for a front office in the NHL when he announced Kyle Dubas as the 17th general manager in franchise history, 

Who is Dubas, and why does his ascension to GM, as a replacement for former longtime New Jersey Devils exec Lou Lamoriello, mark such a significant change of pace for the Maple Leafs?

Firstly, the new GM is only 32 years old, which makes him the second-youngest at his position in the NHL -- just four years older than the Arizona Coyotes' John Chayka and a whopping 43 years younger than Lamoriello, under whom he served as an assistant to the GM starting in 2015. And like Chayka, Dubas has a background in statistical analysis, first emerging as a general manager for his hometown Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, of the Ontario Hockey League, at the age of 25.

Dubas grew up around the Greyhounds, his grandfather coaching them and his father interning with them, and he first joined the OHL club as a scout while still attending Brock University. He landed with the Maple Leafs in 2014 as an assistant GM and, a year later, served as one of two interim GMs for the team.

Dubas, like other analytically-inclined GMs who rose to the top of a front office at a young age, such as Theo Epstein with the Red Sox or Daryle Morey with the Houston Rockets, has gotten a reputation as a "Computer Boy" but The Toronto Star explained that the moniker  isn't entirely accurate.  

From the Star: 

Dubas has been an advocate of speed and skill, for analytics blended with fresh thinking. It's not that he's some computer boy; he is a young hockey man whose grandfather was a coach, who has been a scout. But Shanahan instinctively grasped the concept of PDO, or the rhythms and ebbs of shooting percentage and save percentage, as a player; Dubas grasped it, among other things, as an executive. Shanahan clearly believes in Dubas: both are hockey men with curious minds and an expansive view of the world. In that way, they fit.  

Dubas' new role not only thrusts the top of the Maple Leafs' front office into the next generation of analysis but leaves the future of fellow interim GM Mark Hunter in question.