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in the new CBA the signing bonus is now capped at 60% – Signing bonuses will be capped at 60 percent of the full player’s salary
so a little advantage the Leafs had they are looking at as a problem…naturallyalso Jays giving 2015 vibes, but also how is that 10 years ago
Is that only for contracts moving forward? Matthews’ bonuses after the new cap kicks in are at 77% and 70% for the last two years of his contract.
Yes, so starting in 2026 all new contracts will have this restriction. Existing contracts are grandfathered.
The culture starts with winning, its simply not all about taxes….sure it may help but if you have a winning culture with a good locker room, players will go there.
Tampa, dallas and florida all had low tax rates for decades, its only until they started winning constantly that they began attracting so many players.
Nothing will change here in toronto until they begin to win in the playoffs.
I think that’s probably fair – the culture of taking less to win starts with knowing how to win and what it takes to do it.
When I think of a winning culture, there are teams that struggle but maintain a “winning culture” through their tougher periods. As an example, and I realize this predates the cap, so it’s not an apples:apples comparison, but the idea is presented – as the Canadiens dynasty from the late 70s faded away after another decade of continually good play and the team transitioned from a Hall of Fame lineup to a lineup that featured guys like Richer, Skrudland or Naslund – all good, but none worthy of standing in Lafleur’s shadow – but the guys who had known what it took to win – Robinson or a younger Carbonneau who had learned from that group – carried the torch forward. As much as Patrick Roy in 92-93 is a legend, I don’t think that team wins the cup without the culture of winning that was established in the 1970s by Bowman’s group.
That’s ultimately Toronto’s largest challenge, I think. He may have been an asshole but when they started the rebuild with Babcock and Lamoriello at the top, you had guys who understood the culture change and “being a good pro”. They were the only stewards the Leafs had. I mean they got Hainsey in 2017, who had won a cup – but the larger voices that led the team over the years were Marleau, Thornton, Spezza and of course Tavares. It’s not intended as an offense to any of their legacies, but none of them would have implanted a winning culture change – none of them had won anything.
You replace Lamiorello with Dubas and Babcock with Keefe and you move further away from that winning culture. And to be clear – I am not saying that Lamiorello was great or that Babcock wasn’t an asshole – I’m noting that they both carried more of a cultural influence than anyone else in the organization. Obviously I don’t _know_, but I believe that stuff carries a lot of weight.
Ok enough with the taxes bs.
Florida has had low taxes for pretty much its existence in the league, yet its only recently that they are attractive to players. Ffs bob had to be lure there with a crazy contract.
Its because they win…the past 3 years theyve been winners. Same with vegas.
They win
Im sure a little less tax is nice, but its not the major reason. If it was, players would be lining up to play for the kraken.The yank dollar taking a big hit, much like their economy. Going down, down down.
If you can choose between 4 or 5 good teams and 3 of them have no state tax compared to another 2 that have 20% more, I’m sure it’s a larger factor than you’d think. The fact that Florida, Tampa, Dallas and Vegas are all competitive teams is definitely going to help them – but it starts there. Having the tax advantage allows you to remain competitive longer and more easily because you do save $1m here or $2m there.
Something else that’s important is culture. Boston’s culture led to guys taking less to remain competitive. You’re seeing that in Florida now. You saw it in Tampa as well. Maybe Tavares’ latest contract can start something here, but I think as long as Matthews continues to seek ego-satisfying numbers, nothing will change here.
Guy, he bounced on his own accord. He didn’t want to play here. Boo hoo. Move on. Christ.
Incorrect. Moron fans pushed him as the scapegoat, management walked him out the door and the media, who owns the team, ran narrative cover for it. He did not leave because he preferred to leave. If he wanted to leave earlier, he would have left a long, long time before it got to July 1st. Even on the way out, he facilitated a trade. He could have given them the finger, signed a 4 year deal and been a UFA at 32 all over again. He didn’t do that. The narrative of him “not wanting to play here” is the equivalent of Leafs fans bullshitting themselves into saying “you can’t fire me because I quit” as a massive cope to losing an elite two-way player for basically a dick on a stick.
No one argues that Marner isn’t an exceptional hockey player. He’s a two-time first team all-star. He’s 5th in franchise scoring and 3rd in P/G (1.13) behind only Gilmour (1.15) and Matthews (1.16).
Marner was overpaid on his first contract extension and was insistent on, again, being overpaid on his next. You can claim it’s wrong or incorrect, but his peers took significantly less than he did. We can also claim that he’s compensating for taxes – but again, $61m of his $65.5m was paid out in signing bonus money that can be deferred or redirected somewhat. Did he still get dinged in taxes more than someone in Dallas or Florida? Yeah, he did. But so it goes. When we look at Marner’s $10.9m contract over 6 years and compare that to Rantanen’s $9.25m, which was signed two weeks later, you start to realize you got hosed in the Marner contract. Obviously other immediate comparables were Aho @ $8.5m, Eichel @ $10m, Kucherov @ $9.5m or Panarin @ $11.6m. A solid middle-ground in that mix is probably $9.5m.
But while this is speculation I think that Mitch was never truly happy in Matthews’ shadow. There were comments by his father or his agent which were direct shots at Matthews and either subtly, or not so much, throwing shade on the team’s franchise player. He said he was already done 2 years ago. If you make $11m and don’t accept the criticism that comes with your failures, you are the problem. For all that Matthews has not excelled in games 5-7 either, he was worn that mantle of failure and accepted it – he doesn’t get bombastic with the media or run away or check out and want to leave. He does get to hold the excuse that he was playing injured all season – and any of us who watched it could see it clear as day from game 1 against Montreal throughout the season that he wasn’t right.
That said, if he doesn’t manage to stay healthy enough to step up and lead by example, this will a wasted rebuild.
I’ve said before that the team will miss Marner – and they will – but you’re bitching about something Shanahan fucked them on over a year ago. Like it or not, Mitch was on the way out and he knew it – and he told the Leafs about it, apparently. At this point they need to balance the roster with a better mix of toughness to support the skilled guys. If the team itself is harder to play against they probably don’t miss Mitch’s contributions as much. I’m not saying they’ve done this for the record. I’m not a gigantic fan of their offseason moves so far – or lack thereof – but they are putting themselves in a position where they can.
Kevin Papetti
@KPapetti
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1h
Friedman: “One other guy that I think the Leafs are in on is Jack Roslovic”This guy really flew under the radar, but he has a history with AM34, fits the age group, probably due for a raise but not too much from his 2.8M. Right shot, can play center and wing. I like it.
I won’t lie I’m liking Treliving’s focus atm. Seems a bit more on lines 3 and 4 and not at finding some top six guy to replace Marner which was the point all along.
They got their $7+ million dollar guy to replace Marner already, his name is Knies. The rest will be some nice intelligent moves around forward depth leading up til October is my guess unless there is some sort of no brainer move that comes along.
Imagine a 3rd line with Roslovic, Roy, and Robertson. I wouldn’t mind that line at all.
I like Roslovic fine – but I have to admit that I liked him better in 2021-22 with Columbus – but the opportunity he had there (playing with Laine/Nyquist/Voracek) while Jenner was injured seemed to inspire him. Last year in Carolina he was given a shot with Jarvis and Aho but while his stats were okay, his actual play wasn’t very good – at least not defensively. I’m also not a huge fan of the fact that he’s not a PK option. I’d like to get more guys in that bottom-6 who are defensively sound, battle hard and are effective penalty killers.
If you set aside, for the moment, that now in particular would be a bad time to make a trade since there’s no one available to take Rielly’s place. Like if they’d gone after Gavrikov (and I do understand that he had eyes only for the Rangers), then Rielly would be an expendable piece – although I don’t know who’s providing offense out of that D without Rielly there. But there’s nothing there.
A straight Kadri <-> Rielly deal wouldn’t be _that_ bad if you had a replacement for Rielly. It would still be a bad trade, though just because of their age difference and the fact that Kadri’s decline should speed up significantly over the next few years.
For Leaf fans, I’m pretty sure the appeal around Kadri is that he’s the type of player that line 2 needs – gritty, wins battles, still offensive enough to belong – and Rielly is frustrating to watch because he’s just not a very good defenseman. You still need puck movement from the back-end, though, and Rielly is basically the only one providing that.
Using visual data from AllThreeZones, it basically says what we know: Rielly isn’t good at defense and Kadri is still pretty good. I think the decision – were this real (and I sincerely don’t think it is) would be based on what you need more and for how long you need it because Kadri would be a risky acquisition at his age and carrying that term.
Yeah. I’ve been getting nothing but errors – even not quoting.
My point at the time was simply that if you look at the ages and terms of the guys on this team – Tavares, Tanev, McCabe, Rielly, OEL – it doesn’t seem like Kadri would be a stretch. It looks a lot like they’ve set our window realistically in the next 4 years or so.
I also don’t think that Jenner is a strong fit given that he’s 32, hasn’t played more than 70 games since before COVID and the last time he had over 50 points was a decade ago. I like his physicality, but if I’m going to get an overaged centre, I’d aim for Kadri. That said I would also be very in on O’Reilly.
Leafs have their 4 centers. It’s in the top 6 on the wing that they require an upgrade.
Regardless of who they get, it’s not like a centre couldn’t be moved to the wing – including Kadri if you got him, for that matter.
My guess is that Robbie is a sign and trade as part of a top 6 deal. Toss Cowan in and we can hopefully pick up somebody good in their prime.
Since Bobbyson is RFA, and this goes to arbitration, the Leafs would not be able to trade him.
You can still trade him NOW. I’m pretty sure the arbitration restrictions apply once the hearing happens. So there’s like a 48 hour window between the hearing and the ruling – during this period a player can’t be traded. Even after a player (or team) elects for arbitration, the player can be traded until the hearing happens.
So if the player elects arbitration, the team can’t trade them if they don’t accept the award, but they can walk away (losing the player as a UFA).
If the team elects arbitration, the team cannot walk away and must accept the award.Once an award is accepted, the player can be traded.
So I’m just looking things over and here’s a little interest.
Maccelli: $3.43 million (40P estimate)
Roy: $3 million (30P estimate)Find another guy for $3 million who can dump 30P in and bang, there’s Marner’s 100P replaced for $9.43 million while offering far more balanced scoring.
The ship has sailed but I was really hoping to get Brown in the bottom-6 because he’s an exceptional penalty killer and still puts up 30 points / season with limited opportunity to do so.
One way of looking at it is that Marner scored roughly 30 goals but a healthy Auston Matthews will make up half of that. Nic Roy will contribute another 15 from the third line. If Maccelli works out, you get another 15 or so. The question isn’t the offense, per se, it is the penalty killing and the defensive awareness that Marner brought. As much as we all got frustrated when he’d screw up, he did make a lot of good defensive plays and was typically reading plays well and being in the right position to stop plays from developing. Maccelli has some larger shoes to fill there – a more mature Knies will help, a healthy Matthews will help – but I did want them to find a faster guy or two to enhance that PK.
Lots of summer left. Not a lot of options.
Beggers can’t be choosers at this point. Leafs need to add some offense into the top 6 any way they can. JT or Roy can both play the wing if needed.
The talking heads are all saying nobody is selling. So the options are Ehlers …..or somebody’s bad contract (Kadri).
I posted this twice now and it didn’t take. I find that unusual. Something in the original tagging of your post when quoting it maybe?
Most teams consider themselves in the window, on the way up or sustaining a level of competitiveness right now. The only teams I can see who would or should be dealing are Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, the Islanders, Nashville, Boston and Calgary.
If you look at the moves they made in the past few days . . .the Islanders dealt Dobson and their only notable signing was Drouin; I will say that outside of Pelech and Pulock, I’ve never liked the performance vs. salary for most of their forwards.
Philly overpaid Dvorak and Vladar – but I think they are just biding time while they wait for some of their picks to come to fruition while never bottoming out enough to finish the job. Michkov is excellent but the rest of their youth is pretty questionable. I like Bonk, Luchanko and Barkey fine but none of them are significant needle movers. This year they drafted Martone, who feels a little like Knies – but it’s far from enough to help them. That said their only players of interest are Couturier, Konecny and Ristolainen. Personally not a fan of Risto and neither Konecny (8.8) or Couturier (7.8) are worth their contracts.
I think Nashville, Boston and Calgary all want to see where their teams end up before they consider making a move.
Off of Nashville we all like O’Reilly and Bunting isn’t dreadful @ $4.5, albeit there are better options at that cap hit.
Not clear on Boston but most of their signings feel like guys you sign to trade later – like Eyssimont and Jeannot both feel like TDL guys, but the term given to Jeannot says otherwise.
Calgary – who haven’t said their open for business, but they have also said that they are adhering to a process which strongly alludes to a rebuild. They have pieces people would like – Andersson, Weegar or Coleman – The other problem is that they have guys who are making more than most teams would want to pay for the guys – like Huberdeau, Kadri, Sharangovich or Lomberg
Pittsburgh seem the only team that’s truly understood their fate and word is that Dubas is basically Monty Halling the teams around the league. Granted – and it’s been discussed to death before – Crosby, Malkin, Karlsson and Letang all have full NMCs and Rakell, Hayes, Heinen, Graves and Acciari all have partial NTCs. The only guys they can easily move that I’d think are marketable are Rust and Lizotte
You know an interesting thing . . . has anyone seen any of the Leafs players post farewells to Marner? Knies reposted the Leafs PR release. Usually teammates post emotional farewells to their friends and I haven’t seen anyone say anything about it.
I’m not saying they wanted it to happen or that they’re happy it did – but it doesn’t feel like anyone is all that devastated that he left. I find that a little strange. I don’t think he was a problem in the room – but maybe some of that yelling he was doing at the team while he was also flailing and failing was just wearing a little too thin.
