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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.
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.
McMann-Laughton-Domi get the 3rd line role
This is fine for reg season play. but gets dummied against Florida or another contender
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
fun with cherry picked numbers
player A
0 – Goals
4-5 – One Ice goals 5v5
off zone starts 81%Player B
1 goal
6-6 – One Ice goals 5v5
off zone starts 52%dmnted
Participant
with the acquisition of Laughton has made Kampf expendable imo.
I’d like to see Lorentz back as well.Jarnkrok was hurt for most of the season and if the Leafs can move his contract without taken on back would be ok.
I’d see if Pacioretty is willing to com back at 950K
but-out Reaves – ~ 450K for two years or do you let him sit in the minors for the year.not to many C in UFA, I’d bring back JT on a 2 year deal @ a 5M cap hit. If he want a 3 year, Leafs get a lower cap hit ~4.5M
wait and see what the Leafs do now.
Jarny is a decent contract and when healthy can play up and down the line up.
I agree with JT, but lets be honest, he could easily get more on the open marker…something closer to Stamkos.
Speaking of Stamkos, find out if Marner would sign there. If so, do a sign and trade. MAnrer with 8 year deal plus Morgan for Marchessault, buntin (salary dump) and Lauzon.
Not great for Toronto, but they get Marchessault, an ok 2nd/line 3rd player, a youngish big Dman and cap space. Bunting could be traded for a pick.Marner will get more than 11.5, and he should at this point. the cap is 88, if it hits 100, then 11.5 is the same as 13.06
Fans are going to adjust to higher cap and contract expectations… but fans are generally slow to move the needle on stuff like that
~senstrolltwoSomeone will probably do it – but if Rantanen is worth $12m, why is Marner worth more than $13m? It feels like . . .because Marner was already overpaid at $10.9m, opinion-wise his base increase starts from there instead of his salary being based on what he’s providing.
Since 2021 in the playoffs, Rantanen is 3rd in points/game (1.33). Marner, for the record, doesn’t suck like everyone thinks he does – he’s 21st @ 1.
Since 2021 in the season, Marner is 8th in points/game (1.27). Rantanen is 11th @ 1.22.Now this isn’t fairly equivocal to only look at Rantanen but he is the most recent and there could have been a 1:1 trade for the two players, both in expiring deals, so the equivalence has been set for comparative purposes. People will bring up taxes but as much as perhaps you and I think it matters, all these agents keep publicly saying it doesn’t, so . . .
with the acquisition of Laughton has made Kampf expendable imo.
I’d like to see Lorentz back as well.Jarnkrok was hurt for most of the season and if the Leafs can move his contract without taken on back would be ok.
I’d see if Pacioretty is willing to com back at 950K
but-out Reaves – ~ 450K for two years or do you let him sit in the minors for the year.not to many C in UFA, I’d bring back JT on a 2 year deal @ a 5M cap hit. If he want a 3 year, Leafs get a lower cap hit ~4.5M
wait and see what the Leafs do now.
I think you have to let Marner go to market. The price on him shouldn’t exceed $11.5m. Ultimately we keep hearing from all the agents that taxes don’t matter, so if Rantanen is going to make $12m, he’s the bar. He’s crossed 100pts twice and has had more than 40 goals once and more than 50 goals once and has crossed 30 goals on 4 other occasions. Marner has crossed 100 points once and has crossed 30 goals twice; he prorates to over 100 points 5 times. He’s an excellent player but the Leafs will never insulate him to his best effect. Matthews is big, but he doesn’t play a hard enough game – if anything he’s like having two Marners on the ice at the same time. Knies is one part, but if you really wanted to see a guy like Marner excel, you do need some size around him. People love to shit on me for comparing Marner to Kane, but there are a lot of similarities there. Kane, through his prime years, had 123 points in 127 playoff games. Marner has 63 in 70. But Chicago, at their peak, surrounded Kane with size – guys who were over 6’3 and 210lbs and they used their size to effect. The irony is that for the Leafs to get the guys necessary to elevate Marner, they need to let Marner go.
The other thing that going to market likely does for Marner is that it realistically sets his price. If a cusping or growing team like San Jose or Utah or a good team like Carolina feel that Marner puts them over the top, see what they offer. If the market is that good for him, let him be their problem. I doubt he’d come back once the market set a price for him, but who knows? I still doubt he could command more than Rantanen.
WRT to the bottom-6 – I thought Laughton and Lorentz were generally good – I thought both Jarnkrok and Kampf (in his limited audition) were just plain bad. Most importantly, and probably to your point, I thought the Domi line lacked identity and purpose. Domi isn’t a checking line guy. It’s just not his skillset. I thought Holmberg showed all sorts of effort and a complete lack of execution. McMann had a terrible playoffs and most of the time Domi seemed stuffed between those two.
I do think Robertson has run his course and if they can offload Jarnkrok and Kampf it sure would make sense.
Marner will get more than 11.5, and he should at this point. the cap is 88, if it hits 100, then 11.5 is the same as 13.06
Fans are going to adjust to higher cap and contract expectations… but fans are generally slow to move the needle on stuff like thatMarner could re-sign with the Leafs. If they walk from him, I hope there is a clear direction and plan.
But they Leafs need to rebuild the bottom 6, the Panthers crushed them. Floridas top 3 scorers werent a huge factor. head to head against the LEafs top lines. But the bottom 6 couldnt keep up.
If that means spreading Marners money around thats fine also
~senstrolltwoI think you have to let Marner go to market. The price on him shouldn’t exceed $11.5m. Ultimately we keep hearing from all the agents that taxes don’t matter, so if Rantanen is going to make $12m, he’s the bar. He’s crossed 100pts twice and has had more than 40 goals once and more than 50 goals once and has crossed 30 goals on 4 other occasions. Marner has crossed 100 points once and has crossed 30 goals twice; he prorates to over 100 points 5 times. He’s an excellent player but the Leafs will never insulate him to his best effect. Matthews is big, but he doesn’t play a hard enough game – if anything he’s like having two Marners on the ice at the same time. Knies is one part, but if you really wanted to see a guy like Marner excel, you do need some size around him. People love to shit on me for comparing Marner to Kane, but there are a lot of similarities there. Kane, through his prime years, had 123 points in 127 playoff games. Marner has 63 in 70. But Chicago, at their peak, surrounded Kane with size – guys who were over 6’3 and 210lbs and they used their size to effect. The irony is that for the Leafs to get the guys necessary to elevate Marner, they need to let Marner go.
The other thing that going to market likely does for Marner is that it realistically sets his price. If a cusping or growing team like San Jose or Utah or a good team like Carolina feel that Marner puts them over the top, see what they offer. If the market is that good for him, let him be their problem. I doubt he’d come back once the market set a price for him, but who knows? I still doubt he could command more than Rantanen.
WRT to the bottom-6 – I thought Laughton and Lorentz were generally good – I thought both Jarnkrok and Kampf (in his limited audition) were just plain bad. Most importantly, and probably to your point, I thought the Domi line lacked identity and purpose. Domi isn’t a checking line guy. It’s just not his skillset. I thought Holmberg showed all sorts of effort and a complete lack of execution. McMann had a terrible playoffs and most of the time Domi seemed stuffed between those two.
I do think Robertson has run his course and if they can offload Jarnkrok and Kampf it sure would make sense.
