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Thank god for summer…
Here’s my to do list for BT. The Cap is 95.5M …Leafs have 7D and 2G locked up for 32M leaving 63M for the forwards.
1. Create cap space. Kampf and Jarnkrok have July 1 bonus ..after that they become pretty cheap and hopefully moveable. That 4.5M can be (has been) replaced by Holmberg, Laughton, etc…creating extra cap space.
2. Lock up Knies. 5/6 years around $7M seems about right.
3. Lock up the 4th line with size/heavy forecheckers and give them an identity. Lorentz can come back. Find another big/tough winger on the cheap and put Holmberg in the middle. None of them make more than $1M though. McMann-Laughton-Domi get the 3rd line role.
4. Rielly – I’d talk to him about a change/move. If he’s open, shop him, but frankly I don’t expect them to find a match that makes sense.
Okay, the toughest part …
5. Sort out the top 6. They’ve got Knies/Matthews/Nylander signed and about 21.5M to work with for the other 3 slots. Marner/Nylander – If you signed/kept both you’d be left with about $8M to sign the other two top 6 fwds. I think one has to go to create enough room to balance out the middle six. Does MM want to stay …does Willie have any interest in moving away from the noise? Figure it out and do what makes sense. Tavares – for me, he can’t play 18+ minutes at centre in the playoffs. 1 ES point in 7 games …looked slow and couldn’t match up to Lundell or Barkov. He moves to the wing and takes a big pay cut or he moves on. I think he might stay. If he’s in at $5.5M and MM moved on then they’d have about 16M to sign two fwds to play with JT.
The UFA list is pretty shite so the idea of signing MM and JT and trading WN could make a lot of sense. Very unlikely he’d be willing to move but at this point, to make change, you’ve got to ask the question.
Letting MM walk for nothing isn’t a great outcome but in a cap space world you’ve got to pick your spots to spend. BT should be sniffing around the UFA 26′ class to see if anyone’s whispering about not re-signing.
If McDavid wins a cup this year is he more or less likely to re-sign? BT wouldn’t be doing his job if he wasn’t
McMann-Laughton-Domi get the 3rd line role
This is fine for reg season play. but gets dummied against Florida or another contender
Marner is not a guy to build a team around so why pay him like one? He wants to be paid like proven winners and leaders but has done neither.
If they re-sign him (and I am in the camp of do not) it should be for 12M per season max or let him walk. He’s not in the same tier as the guys he thinks he should be paid like. Let his ego deal with that fact and that Matthews makes more than him (as a centre should) but he can jack it at night knowing he makes more than the other soft but skilled winger (who aside from this year actually shows up in games 5,6,7).
Marner is too soft physically and emotionally to be compared to almost anyone at the salary he reportedly thinks he’s worth. Yes Willy is soft too but he wasn’t looking for 13M + was he?
Yes MLSE has overpaid all 3 of the core forwards and also Reilly clearly but that doesn’t change the situation they are in now.
And yes other players on the leafs check some or all of those boxes – the Captain hasn’t led them to where they need to get to not been good in elimination games until game 6 this year and then no-showed for game 7.
None of that is a good excuse to not do the right thing now to crate a more balanced roster & try and fix the mistakes made by prior GM’s.
Going GM mode in video games and brushing off the financial constraints and no trade clauses like it’s nothing is a fools game. Marner leaving and maybe JT leaving or coming back at 50% of his current cost are the moves they can make and should make now if they want to rebuild on the fly and balance the roster.
Teams that win aren’t afraid to make difficult and bold moves, the Leafs have made zero of those in the near decade with this core.
Monkey I shit on you every time you compare Showtime Kane to Marner for good reason – they aren’t the same players. Kane produced when the chips were down and led that team with Towes where Marner has not. You can blame the roster construction as much as you want winner find a way to win – Marner simply hasn’t IMO.
It’s not the job of the Leafs to build a roster to insulate a small, skilled winger in Marner but even if it is why is he now asking for $ exceeding the franchise player? He’s only restricting their ability to do so if they chose to more.
Marner (and Matthew and Nylander & Reilly) all got paid for delivering jack shit. This is the biggest problem and the bar was set and these clowns just keep one upping each other every salary negotiation, leveraging the other core players salary and MLSE stupidly continues to play that game.
Matthews is arguably the only one of those salary extensions that is defendable simply because of the fact he a franchise centre.
IMO you simply can’t compare what Chicago did to ensure Kane had success to what Toronto has or hasn’t done for Marner for 2 big reasons:
1. Kane and Towes got their huge salary AFTER delivering in Chicago. The entire “core” in Toronto got their’s based on achieving nothing & that is the fault of MLSE (Shanny, Lou, Dubas). This brain trust thought they could get ahead of the curve by overpaying in advance and I guess they thought that would save some $ after the core delivered. As we all know all too well that was a horribly flawed strategy and then later on Covid / flat cap and well here we are.
2. Chicago dumped huge dollars into 2 contracts in Towes and Kane. Toronto decided to do it into 4 in Matthews, Marner, JT and Willy. Also MLSE’s fault but the presumed greed of the players (which has some merit based on hold outs and fairly public negotiations with a-hole parents and agents) sure didn’t help.
So here we are and I can only hope MLSE will eat crow and make the difficult but necessary moves to try and make this team balanced to get to the next level.
Ya, lots of reason to be pessimistic but I will say Domi did better than I expected in his minutes, McMann got his first real look and I think he deserves a second kick at the can, and Laughton got buried by Berube in the d-zone. Laughton was a mess those first few weeks on the 3rd line but settled down after that. He’s got enough of a resume (10-15G per year) that I’d try him as 3C with some speed on the wings. Worth a look for me …and frankly they’re not going anywhere so you’ve got to find a way to fit them in and make them work.
It’s probably career suicide but if I was Marner I would take a 1 year deal with the leafs for the same money. Show the leaf fans you can play ball and not demand the most money. It will probably help his mental struggles as well.
Then next year be better in the playoffs and take your big contract. It might help the future ticket if he can perform well.
It’s probably career suicide but if I was Marner I would take a 1 year deal with the leafs for the same money. Show the leaf fans you can play ball and not demand the most money. It will probably help his mental struggles as well.
Then next year be better in the playoffs and take your big contract. It might help the future ticket if he can perform well. – Bryant
I dont think it’s career suicide. Guy put up a 100 points. If he gets close to it again then I am sure there’s a team out there willing to pay him a fortune for that kind of production. There’s a lot of teams who would trade for the leafs season this year… some owners definitely want those playoff gates. So I agree! Marner for 10 million. 1 year.
Love you buddy …but, no way you would do that. Even if you developed a strong opiod addiction and let yourself do bad things your super-smart, sandwich-making wife would stop you.
nice to see not every post is about how bad Willy is and how good Mitch is.
Nylander should not be traded. But Marner shouldn’t be allowed to walk for nothing either.
Absolutely everybody crying about Marner’s “big game” production has failed to realize that Nylander did nothing in Game 5, 6 and 7. Neither did Tavares. In fact, their line was on for most of the goals against in this series. Defensively, they were horrid and preyed upon.
Marner had a GWG against Florida and a primary assist on the GWG in Game 6. They did not win the series but he did contribute to game winning events.
The Leafs lost this series because their bottom-six forwards absolutely sucked. Marner, and the top line, won 3 games with their production.
Leafs fans are correct that this team needs change but unfortunately too stupid to know which changes will actually make a difference.
FIRSTIES!!!👊
what’s up hb fam?👊🏿
i got banned by ek until mid august for posting:
FIRST!!!
any habs rumours!?!
nuff said
lololololo🤣
FIRSTIES!!!👊
what’s up hb fam?👊🏿
i got banned by ek until mid august for posting:
FIRST!!!
any habs rumours!?!
nuff said
lololololo🤣
~SkalapyIt too ya long enough. I’d say with a few exceptions we got the god squad of posters here, lets keep it that way.
Just need a little more Mr. Sir around here.
It’s probably career suicide but if I was Marner I would take a 1 year deal with the leafs for the same money. Show the leaf fans you can play ball and not demand the most money. It will probably help his mental struggles as well.
Then next year be better in the playoffs and take your big contract. It might help the future ticket if he can perform well. -bryant
He already did that this year. He led the team in scoring despite Matthews A) missing games B) being injured and C) playing like shit.
He scored 100 points. He killed penalties. He was 2nd in Leafs playoff scoring, scored a GWG and assisted the GWG (so two GAME WINNING EVENTS) against the Panthers.
He is 2nd all-time in Leafs playoff assists.
They only thing he did not do this year was beat the Panthers and go on to win the Cup. But that’s something that NOBODY on this team did either.
And that’s not Marner’s fault. The bottom-six sucked. Why? Because the Leafs love wasting time, money and picks on pylons like Holmberg, Jarnkrok, Kampf, Reaves, Robertson, Laughton etc.
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