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Ok, but who are these players that they are going to get for $8m and $5m that are playoff warriors that want to play for the leafs?
~Fakepartofme
We don’t know who does and who doesn’t and who is going to stay where they are and so on.
Bennett and Marchand both grew up Leaf fans and Bennett is from Holland’s Landing. He expressed interest in coming here before. Marchand’s requirement is to be in the east and play for a contender. Both of these guys fit in that bill. Would they come here? No one knows, but the opportunity at least exists.
Brandon Tanev has publicly said that wants to finish his career playing alongside his brother. Now would be a pretty good time to consider that.
There are players out there that would remake the bottom-6 on this team significantly better than it is. Kampf, Jarnkrok, Robertson and Holmberg would all go; Reaves would ride the bus with the Marlies. McMann, Lorentz and Laughton could stay. Right now I have penciled in Knies at $7.5 and Tavares at $5.5 and that leaves you with $18.5m. Bennett, Marchand, Tanev, any of Suter, Bjugstad or Faksa (particularly Faksa, because I liked how he played in this year’s playoffs at any rate).
Depending on contracts – assuming around 8 for Bennett, 4.5 for Marchand and then 2 and 2.5 for Tanev and Faksa, you have a bit of wiggle room sitting there for 13th F and 7th D as needed – Cowan, Quillan, Steeves (if he resigns), or someone else – and guys like Myers, Danford or Webber could slot in the the 7 spot.
When you move outside of the Bennett and Marchand type players in this year’s crop I don’t see a lot that “changes the DNA” – Duchene, Ehlers, Boeser, Giroux, Mangiapane, Kane – good players, but older to old – and not really carrying the reputation of being hard to play against.
No, it makes them a lot weaker. Leafs could easily go from 108 points down to 98 points and fighting for a wild card spot. The division isn’t just going to crumble next year.
For starters, Matthews won’t be happy. Going from Marner to Domi is a massive, giant downgrade. You want your 69 goal scorer to score 69 goals? You keep his #1 elite playmaker. Remember, his contract expires in 3 years. You won’t keep him if he’s not happy.
Secondly, the PP suffers, which is already shit and run by an idiot. Taking away a passing weapon like Marner makes it even harder to set-up Matthews on the PP.
Third, the defense / PK suffers because Marner is a Selke candidate who kills penalties, steals pucks and prevents goals.
If the Leafs don’t win the division again (without Marner, they won’t), they risk losing to the Panthers in the 1st round. Or even Tampa Bay. Ottawa won’t be an easy out either. Neither is an up and coming Montreal team. Just because Boston fell off the map, doesn’t mean the regular season and the division don’t matter anymore. The worse the match-up, the less likely they can win a playoff round, much less multiple rounds.
And if you go down the list of UFAs, the vast majority of them are garbage in the playoffs, including Tavares who did not score a point in 6 out of 7 games against Florida and will only get worse defensively at 35+. So as much as people want to make BeLeaf they can just replace Marner with UFA playoff Gods, they are indeed dreaming. The playoff performers out there are either 35+ (Giroux, Kane, Toews etc.) or going to stay where they are (Bennett, Marchand in Florida) if they know what is good for them.
~UGNever winning a thing because you sunk all your money into 3-4 guys who all play the same way and don’t have the balls to stand up when it counts is another sure way to lose your players. If the Leafs had insulated Marner with size and given him his own line to drive instead of putting him with Matthews, maybe the fanbase doesn’t scapegoat him and maybe he stays. They didn’t. An overwhelming majority of the fanbase hates him and wants him gone – ironically while driving him out of town, they’ll also hate him for not waiving his NTC for Rantanen because he wanted to stay.
But Marner just does the same things every year – gets pushed to the perimeter and isn’t strong enough nor fast enough to push the defenders back when he’s entering the zone. The book on Marner is – close on him quickly and he’ll give away the puck.
He is nowhere near as talented, but Domi was more effective against Florida than Marner was. 9 years of all of these guys not showing up when it counts – and maybe you give them a pass for their first couple of years – but 7 years with Tavares – and none of them have stepped up when it mattered, and what’s worse is that they have actually played worse when it mattered.
How long do you get? How often can we keep trying with the same guys who don’t step up and get it done before we start to say we need other guys? It starts with Marner because he’s easy. You get nothing for him but you’re not overpaying him and he has to go – you heard the fans booing specifically him in game 7. In my opinion, there’s no coming back there.
I know Marner is fantastic and versatile and an excellent player. I also know that we have too much “Mitch Marner” on this team already and not enough Bennett and Marchand and Benn (I don’t want THIS Benn, I want prime Benn – but he comes to mind as what you need) and Perry. They need more asshole and a lot less pretty.
Bennett isn’t coming to Toronto.
~PDO Speedwagon
My heart isn’t set on it, but he’s a good example of how you start to change the dynamic of the core. I’m not sold that he’s coming here obviously, but I’m not sold that he’s not. Most reporters say that he wants to stay in Florida but if that’s not possible, he’d like to go to Toronto. Seravalli is reporting that he’s likely to get around $7.5m x 7; Dreger is reporting that he’ll have his pick of the litter and will likely not pick Toronto as a result.
I don’t think any of them really know. I do recall that when he was being shopped from Calgary, he had Toronto as a hopeful destination, but it didn’t work out. You could circle that one as another huge miss by Dubas.
Bennett is definitely going to be pursued, and that realistic dollar figure of $7.5m is probably $9m when teams look at the escalating cap and get greedy. That being said, Bennett is going to be 29, so a 7 year deal until he’s 36 may not be the boat anchor of a contract that it _feels_ like. I don’t know. You’re looking 20 goals / 45 points – maybe that’s 55 points with Nylander – as a 2C? $9m is too high, but it may be what they’d have to pay.
thats fine, more just looking at the overall impact of losing Marner and getting another different player. insert whoever you want
~senstrolltwo
You’re asking a simple question that does require a slightly complex answer, though. I think you want the simple answer that of course they will be worse if Marner leaves – he’s a star player. On the surface it’s true, but it’s not about Marner – it’s about the whole of the team and what you make of it.
Losing Marner and replacing him with Ehlers is probably not a substantial difference – maybe a -6 point swing. But it’s what they do with the other money they are saving that makes the difference.
If they are truly looking to change their identity and both Berube and Treliving are on the same page, then getting guys like Bennett and Marchand make that happen – and I couldn’t predict the point swing variation from it. Older but more competitive. Tougher but less skilled. Less soft but more irritating.
At the end of the day if the forwards on this team are changed up where more than 50% of them win more than 50% of the puck battles, then you have a team that is better suited for the playoffs. When Jarnkrok, Kampf, Domi, Robertson, Marner, Matthews, Nylander, Tavares and Holmberg are losing more battles than they’re winning, you have a problem.
If you swap out Jarnkrok, Kampf, Robertson, Marner and Holmberg for guys who win more puck battles than they lose, you can easy absorb and support the other 4 guys (and it should be noted that a healthy Matthews wins more battles than he loses, but this year was hopefully a statistical outlier) losing battles.
Here is a question
Lets say the Leafs now with Marner are a 105 point team. pretty much last season, a few lessHow many points do the Leafs have in 2025-26 if..
-they dont re-sign marner and dont replace him
-replace him with Bennett
-replace with player of your choice (name them)I guess it depends on what you’re looking at and how you’re looking at it. Marner both drives play and kills penalties. Bennett doesn’t kill penalties, but he did have a much higher Created xGoals – so he’s in the right places, doing the right things. I feel that if you could mix him in with Tavares and Nylander, you’ve made your second line a very dangerous line. With a healthy Matthews, it would be a resurgence, even with Marner gone – but Domi could offer a shadow of what Marner brought. You could seek out an Ehlers or a Boeser, but I’d much rather be targeting Marchand and other guys to recreate the bottom-6 with more compete and more defensive acumen to help improve the PK as a whole.
The area I’d see improvement is that you can improve the areas you can’t today due to dollar allocation which affects a larger percentage of the overall game (ie, Marner is on the ice for 33% of the game, but the other 67% does suffer as a result of the lack of rounded talent out there).
I agree, Johnston was horrid defensively but I’d rather have him as a trading chip than N. Robertson or Jarnkrok, especially if it were able to facilitate being able to bring in high quality reinforcements like Rantanen.
~UGSure – but Johnston was drafted 23rd – noting that the Leafs since 2021 held the 25th, 25th, 25th, 23rd (traded down) and will have the 25th spot again this year. As we’ve noted, they haven’t done a good job of getting value for their 1st round picks that they’ve traded, but they have seemingly found some value in their later picks – Danford, Cowan, Minten, Hildeby, Grebenkin, Knies – maybe even Akhtyamov all have NHL potential – that’s largely since 2021. Setting aside the tragedy with Amirov, the 2020 draft was disappointing – to have made 12 picks and have none of them turn out (save maybe Akhtyamov) is terrible.
This all being said – the guy we hired to be our new Director of Amateur Scouting, Mark Leach, comes from Dallas.
Tampa Bay and Carolina do much better at the draft table than the Leafs. Winnipeg, not so much. But it usually shows up on the ice which is why Tampa Bay has won Cups and Carolina goes deep often.
~UGWith all due respect to the Carolina Hurricanes, and bearing mind that the Leafs failures are evident – but also tell the tale of their path – the Eastern team in the Stanley Cup final has been from the Atlantic Division every year since 2019. The Atlantic is a gauntlet – Boston, then Tampa and now Florida have all been powerhouses. Would Jim Nill have managed the Leafs into surpassing any of them? I don’t know. A lot of the Stars players did not have an answer for both the Oilers speed and their physicality. Wyatt Johnson had an exceptionally awful playoff. Did you know that the -16 he and Duchene both had is the worst playoff +/- since they started tracking it (Paul Reinhart had a -16 to tie this auspicious mark in 1982-83).
Incorrect.
This is exactly what happens when the only impact players the franchise is capable of drafting is lottery picks.
If this Leafs team was constructed by Jim Nill, it would have all the superstar players along with drafted, developed depth players.
~Unholy_GoalieNoting that Jim Nill has been the GM of Dallas for 12 years and they have not only won nothing, they have missed the playoffs in 4 of those years. I like Dallas – I think they are an excellent hockey team.
I also like the teams and style of Tampa, Carolina and Winnipeg – and just like the Leafs, none are playing.
Typically Nill has held onto his picks and he’s drafted well – although his second round picks have worked out better than a lot of his first round picks; you have Robertson, Hintz and I guess Stankoven (I’m not a huge fan of his, but he was used in the Rantanen acquisition, so hard to argue he had value) – but then you had higher picks like Honka, Gurianov, Tufte, Dellandrea and so on that really – for where they were picked – should have hit.
Maybe if he’d landed on those Dallas would’ve won a cup by now, instead of being curb stomped by Edmonton in 5.
No 1st round picks until 2028
Outside of Cowan, no real high prospects (maybe danforth?)
The player who leads in point most year in reg season, but doesnt show up when it counts in games 5-7 is probably walking for free.
Captain is pretty soft, often injured during the playoffs and doesnt seem to hate to lose.
A bunch of ok FA’s who are gonna want to be overpaid this offseason.Leafs look………………….like the leafs.
~FakepartofmeYet they took the reigning Cup champs to game 7. They laid an egg, but it’s not like Florida didn’t just dummy Tampa and Carolina taking both out in 5.
By all accounts the team’s top scorer, who most here are adamant absolutely sucks in the playoffs, is leaving – and sure it’s for nothing (and the guy responsible has already been shown the door), but what if Matthews played with some grit or tenacity on his line? What if Tavares or Nylander had some toughness or battle on their line? Options will present themselves here and if Treliving wants to make the team different, this is the chance to do just that.
A 1st round pick today isn’t likely to make an impact on this roster until 2029. Knies did in 3 years, but he really is an exception.
I don’t like losing Marner for nothing, but this is the cost of going for it. I’d rather they pushed their chips in rather than sit on the sidelines and collect prospects.
Laughton didn’t do a single thing that every other 4th line guy couldn’t do. You can pick those guys up for $2M – $3M on July 16th. It was a terrible overpay.
~Wedgie
I’m not judging the trade until this upcoming season is done. Laughton has long been touted as a leader who leads by example and off the ice. Tortorella has nothing but good things to say about him, and he’s not typically the complimenting type. Whether he never found his footing here or his role or his linemates, I don’t know – but I’d like to give him another year before that 1st rounder is considered a waste of a pick. At this point if we’re spending draft picks, I like the idea of paying to acquire term and retention.
For two months of O’Reilly and Acciari they gave up a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Gaudette and Abramov; for eleven games of Foligno they gave up a 1st and 2 4ths.
I’m not saying that makes the Laughton look any better right now – a bad trade is a bad trade, even if there are worse ones – but I am saying that Laughton still has time here to make that trade worthwhile.
Thing is, trying to trade Marner only after his no-trade clause kicked in was a waste of time. I don’t blame Tre for it, it’s all on Shanahan, but once he was stuck with him, I guess he did overpay on the short term trades to make sure he’d have one last chance at winning with the “core 4”.
I did like the Carlo trade though, that’s a useful player moving forward regardless of the cost.
~ScabehI didn’t really mind either one, to be honest. They got 50% retention on Laughton, got him for two years and they gave up a late 1st – which I know does have value. You get, typically, about a 60% hit rate on late first round picks. There’s a 20% and 15% hit rate on 4th and 6th round picks. Granted the quality of the player and their ceilings are typically quite different. The best 6th round pick in recent memory was Connor Brown. Holmberg was down in that 6th/7th round area, too – but if contrast that with Easton Cowan, taken 27th, you’re getting a very different calibre of player.
Frankly I didn’t think – and still don’t think – that Laughton was a problem in the playoffs. Saddling him and Lorentz with Jarnkrok, who was bloody awful, was a problem. Taking your less talented players and handicapping them sure isn’t going to help. That said, and being honest, if you’re paying a 1st rounder, you want a guy who is contributing more than Laughton did. Hopefully the second year at $1.5m makes that payment worth it. Frankly, given how badly he struggled, you wonder if putting McMann down on the 4th line with Laughton and Lorentz wouldn’t have created a better cycle and potentially generated some offense. Lord knows McMann wasn’t doing anything anywhere else.
The Carlo trade, similar to you, I like. You get him for 2 more years, he’s retained to a shade under $3.5m and you’re giving up a pretty solid prospect in Minten, a 1st and a 4th. It seems like fair value.
I did like the trade proposal I saw the other day.
Karlson for Kampf + 2025 2nd rnd pick (FLA) + 3rd rnd pick either 2025 (COL) or 2026 (Leafs).
This would mean Marner is gone.
I’d like the to go after Tanev but he will cost at least 3~4M on a 4 year deal.
kinda expensive for a bottom 6 player.
I’d definitely would bring back Lorentz. 2yrs @ 900K per
~dmntedI am of the opinion that Tanev is a $2m / year guy. 6 years ago, Rutherford got a hard-on for a 14 goal guy who played 14 minutes / night and overpaid him @ $3.5m. He’s a phenomenal worker and he’s tenacious and he’s exactly what any bottom-6 would want – but he had 10 goals and 12 assists in a full season and turns 34 at the end of this year. You’re buying his twilight years and those should be discounted, I would imagine.
Marchand on the Leafs…. Are you trying to make me hate the Leafs more?
~Scabeh
You definitely would. What them go full bastard and sign Cousins, too. Just throw their hat in the “Someone’s always gonna be suspended!” ring.
But I look at Edmonton and I think it’s been guys like Keith and Perry who showed the team what it really took to win. Guys who have been there and done it before lead the way. The Leafs need that from someone – or someones. In their past they’ve had Hainsey and I guess Muzzin who were sort of their guys who’d been there and could lead that way. The other guys they had to lead them – Thornton, Marleau, Spezza, Simmonds, Foligno – they’d all won nothing. I suppose they had O’Reilly as well, but I never got the feeling they put him a leadership role as much as they should have.
The question is who on that list changes the “DNA” of the group AND makes us better. Because Tree needs to do both. I don’t envy him.
~fifty mission cap
I’ve said this recently, and I believe it – I don’t think you replace Marner. The point here is that this is a team that loses too many 50/50 battles for pucks. They lose on the boards. Those lose in front of their net. They lose in front of the opposition’s net. The DNA here, in my opinion, is that there’s too much soft and not enough compete.
Now if I had my way we’d be moving on from Marner, Robertson, Jarnkrok, Kampf and Patches. If they could get Rielly to waive, I’d do that, too – but replacing him would be difficult, because no matter how lousy he is at defense, you still need some puck movement and skating up the ice.
The guys *I’d* want to target are Bennett, Marchand, Suter, Tanev; I’d see it as Knies-Matthews-Domi; Tavares/Marchand-Bennett-Nylander; Tavares/Marchand-Suter-McMann; Lorentz-Laughton-Tanev. There’s still pop in the top-6, but you add compete and more 50/50 puck battles won and the bottom-6 gains some offensive traction on the 3rd line with defensive awareness and lots of puck battle in that mix. There are a lot of names in the bottom-6 mix which can help a team – Smith is a favourite of mine; I like Roslovic and I appreciate the speed of Mangiapane or Granlund. There are ways to remake parts of this team in ways that compliment the key pieces. Marchand is a guy that I would absolutely target because you need a voice that knows how to win and what it takes to win and can still lead by example. He’d be my #1 target if I were Treliving.
Does that change the “DNA”? I don’t know – but they need less passivity, and they’re just carrying too much of it with both Mitch and Willy.
then why would he take a discount knowing the market is thin? out of the goodness of his heart? many teams will be calling his agent for his services.
~Yes its me 2050
Specifically because he does want to be here. It was reported that as long as the offer is in the ballpark they can work to get it to where it’s fair. If the Leafs come in at $1m or Tavares comes in at $8m, then they probably don’t get something done – but the general feeling was that something centered around a $4-5m AAV as a starting point would be good. People will talk him at $2m which is preposterous and some will talk about him at $7.5m – which is probably where the market would value him (from Stamkos setting the bar).
