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Florida only has 4.9’million left in cap space after signing ekblad and 18 guys signed. Going to be tough for them to sign Marchand too.
Friedman is reporting that they are closing in on a 6 year $32m deal – so $5.3m . . . 6 YEARS? He’s 37 now, so it’s a 35+ contract that isn’t really buriable and will count against the cap for all 6 years – if he retires at 40, there’s 3 years of $5.3m against the cap. Yeesh. That’s a . . . commitment.
EF expects the Marner to Vegas trade to happen today. Let’s just get this done and move on to the next chapter.
So they can bring in Roy, a big body who doesn’t use it (less playoff hits than Marner) and can’t actually play center because his FO% sucks (47.7%).
Looking like a wild card, 1st round exit kind of season.
You can always choose to not watch or talk about it.
Roy averages 218 hits / 82 games in the playoffs by the way.
Marner averages 118 / 82 playoff games and let’s be honest – no one has ever felt one of his hits.
But Roy isn’t equivalent to Marner and that’s not the comparison that’s being drawn out.
Roy’s 82 game playoff average:
10G, 23A, 3 GWG, 14:26 ATOI, 49.9% FO%, 49 Blocks, 211 hits, 46 Takeaways, 49 Giveaways
Kampf’s 82 game playoff average:
9G, 7A, 2 GWG, 14:15 ATOI, 54.3% FO%, 21 blocks, 136 Hits, 21 Takeaways, 30 Giveaways
That’s a decent upgrade in an area where we need more physical presence.
Nic Roy has had 3 deep playoff runs of 19 games or more; on the entire Leafs team these are the players who have had more games in a single playoff:
Carlo – once
OEL – once
Jarnkrok – once
Tanev – once
Reaves – onceThat’s it. I’ll take the experience and the acumen. I’m still not sure this thing is happening, but if it does – I’d rather get something than nothing and Roy is a decent 3C option.
It’s a bit of a strange acquisition – he’s not a big guy and doesn’t play physical. He’s not much of a board presence and doesn’t kill penalties. He did score 17 a couple of years ago and I recall people were making noise about him, but nothing really stands out in my opinion. I guess he can shift up and down the lineup, so he’s a decent line 2/3 guy, but my bet would be that he’s less of a line 2 guy.
Waste of 3.4 AAV in cap space. Jake McBain is sitting right there in Utah with no contract and this is the garbage that Treliving brings in to win the playoffs? Treliving is huffing glue.
Matias / Kampf / Jarnkrok. <— Almost 8 million for this bullshit line.
Out in the 1st round.
You need a Snickers.
I doubt that Kampf and Jarnkrok are still there – at the very least I’d expect Kampf moved out.
Maccelli is a playmaking forward who can play either wing. I do read that the Leafs are hoping he’s a top-6 option and there’s an awful lot of analysts who believe he could fill that role quite nicely. *IF* they brought in a legitimate top-6 winger for a 2029 2nd round pick, that’s tidy work. If he turns out to be a 3rd line player, it’s not exactly the worst deal they could have made – but I’ve said before I want more grit and competitiveness in our bottom-6 and this guy isn’t that.
Leafs acquire Matias maccelli from utah for a conditional 3rd round pick
Looks like 3rd liner.
i dont know much of anything about this person
It’s a bit of a strange acquisition – he’s not a big guy and doesn’t play physical. He’s not much of a board presence and doesn’t kill penalties. He did score 17 a couple of years ago and I recall people were making noise about him, but nothing really stands out in my opinion. I guess he can shift up and down the lineup, so he’s a decent line 2/3 guy, but my bet would be that he’s less of a line 2 guy.
Going into the FA period is going to be interesting. I feel like the Leafs have had a hole in the top-6 since Tavares arrived. This is our history of top-6 lines:
A look at the leafs top-6 over the years (numbers in brackets are GF/60 – GA/60):
2018
Hyman – Tavares – Marner (3.9 – 2.8)
Marleau – Matthews – Kapanen (4.5 – 3.7)2019
Hyman – Matthews – Marner (4.2 – 3)
Kerfoot – Tavares – Nylander (3.1 – 3.1)2020
Hyman – Matthews – Marner (4.3 – 1.7)
Galchenuyk – Tavares – Nylander (3.9 – 2.5)2021
Bunting – Matthews – Marner (6.6 – 3.4)
Kerfoot – Tavares – Nylander (3.5 – 3.5)2022
Bunting – Matthews – Nylander (4.7 – 1.6)
Jarnkrok – Tavares – Marner (3.4 – 2.7)2023
Knies – Matthews – Marner (3.4 – 1.8)
Bertuzzi – Tavares – Nylander (2.6 – 2)2024
Knies – Matthews – Marner (3.6 – 2.3)
Pacioretty – Tavares – Nylander (3.7 – 2.7)We can draw conclusions how we want, but the absence of a clear top-6 2LW has been prevalent the entire time. I’m not being unfair, I don’t think, to note that deploying 38 year old Marleau on the 2nd line – especially at a $6.25m cap hit (in 2017 – by contrast that’s an $8m contract now, which makes the rumours about Marchand a little crazy). But Kerfoot, Jarnkrok, a 36 year old Pacioretty coming off 3 straight injury shortened seasons . . . personally I never liked Galchenyuk, but he did post decent numbers – and I’ve never been a fan of Bertuzzi’s.
Yet this team has managed to post positive GF/60 – GA/60 rates in the top-6 every year. The most striking thing is that the best GF and GA years were actually with Bunting – both in GF/60 in 2021 and GA/60 in 2022.
So now we go into this FA period with likely absences in the top-6 RW and LW. It should prove to be an interesting time and probably the one we’ll judge Treliving for the most. I think most of us have liked his work to date, but this is sort of his proving ground.
Watching Friedman right now …he says he thinks Marner-Roy trade will happen b/c they want an 8 yr deal. He says Vegas is just getting some other stuff done before they get Marner done. I’m not putting much into the tampering (probably just media noise). It makes sense b/c Vegas/Marner want 8 yrs and need his rights. They have to move about $3M to get it done so Roy makes sense.
I have no aversion to Roy – he’s a big bodied 3C who can play defense and knows how to ramp up his physicality in the playoffs. He feels like a Berube type of player. I hope it happens.
Nice breakdown M.P.
I’ve been a big proponent of breaking up JT/Willie …for me they don’t work when it matters. I’ve always been of the opinion that JT’s one of those guys that works best with a pair of grindy mobile wingers. Okposo, Moulson, etc…. I’d give him Knies and McMann (or someone new) and let them role. Nylander is dying for an excuse to be that guy that looked like the best player in the world for 4 months (pre-contract). He wants more minutes, more responsibility, etc… put him with Matthews and play them 22 mins per night. I like the idea of Marchand barking in both their ears. I think/hope that Marchand and Nylander help elevate 34.
For me that’s how I’d draw up the top 6 for the playoffs.
I still think Laughton has some 3rd line in him. Him, Domi, Roy could be good. Love your 4th line options …Jeannot and Tanev would be instant energy every time they’re on the ice. Laughton could centre them or add a 4th line PK/Banger.
I’m with you ..I don’t see Rielly waiving so I’m expecting the D to look the same.
I’m not sold that we’re getting Roy. I guess we’ll see what happens. I figure if Vegas really was tampering and it can be proven – and the league will investigate it at their own discretion, not at the Leafs’ request – then they might be better off just not giving the Leafs anything since they could be punished even more for tampering. For instance Friedman said that the league investigated the Leafs for tampering when they signed Tavares – it wasn’t at the Islanders’ request, they just did it. So Treliving could be trying to play some hardball with McCrimmon – but if the end punishment were something like $5m, some draft picks and public embarrassment – as well as the termination of the Marner contract – why ALSO give up Roy? If Vegas is in the clear and didn’t do anything then why give up Roy to negotiate with Marner when they can sign him tomorrow?
Anyway, we’ll see.
One name I didn’t throw in the mix, but I really should have because I’d love him back on Toronto is Connor Brown . . . he’s probably a $2.5 – $3m player, but he can shift up and down the lineup and is an excellent penalty killer.
Jarnkrok becomes 775k on a 1 yr deal around noon tomorrow (Cap hit stays at 2.1) so he should be easy to move. Kampf less so but he’ll be ~ 1.7M over two years in cash so there’s hope.
Leafs look like this to me so far …
XXX-Math-Nyl
Kni-Tava-XXX
Dom-Roy-McM
XXX-Lau-XXXIf they find homes for Kampf and Jarnkrok then they’ll have about $16.2M to fill things out (and that includes the overage salaries for Patches, Reaves and Benning).
Maybe they can move the rights to Robertson and Holmberg for stuff too.
Probably enough to add Marchand, a middle six RW, and a pair of torpedo’s to play on the fourth line. I like Jeannot on the 4th if he’s willing to be $2M or less and short term.
I tend to think it’s more like:
Knies-Matthews-1RW
2LW-Tavares-Nylander
Domi-3C-McMann
4LW-Laughton-4RWI think most people are roughly of the opinion that Kampf, Jarnkrok and Robertson are probably not back. Ironically Jarnkrok was one of the best defensive forwards in the playoffs but he just contributed so little offensively, that his decent xGA and GA numbers were still lost minutes. REgardless, the above leaves about $20.7m (noting that it excludes a 13F or 7D, which you do need to have room to support) -I’m not sure if the Leafs have any carry-over bonuses attributable, but Reaves & Benning net out to $300k after buried salaries.
I don’t think Marchand is going to be available. I think Florida can swing both him and Bennett and they let Ekblad hit the market.
The top options on the right side are probably Boeser ($8.5m) or Kane ($4m?) and on the left side are probably Ehlers ($8.5m) and Mangiapane ($4m)
Internal promotion of Domi to 1RW is a possibility. Playing with Matthews and Knies might offer him more protection defensively.
I like the opportunity here to really revamp the entire bottom 6 into a more checking/physical entity – which would sort of leave Domi out of that mix. Guys like Tanev ($2m), Lorentz ($1.5m), Faksa ($1.5m), Jeannot ($1.5m), Bjugstad ($2.5m), Suter ($4.5m) could remake the bottom 6 into a more effective group – but that 1RW spot is going to be a big gap. If we could get a guy like Mangiapane on 2LW, it might an affordable option. Guys like Drouin or Skinner are affordable options but they are defensive liabilities who probably are the opposite of what Tavares/Nylander would need.
I’d be suitably happy if they managed to sign Ekblad and got Rielly to waive his NMC, but that doesn’t feel plausible.
Assuming Knies comes back at about ~ 7M the Leafs would have about 20.5M to spend with defence and g’tending filled out and …
Domi-Matthews-Nylander
Knies-JT-McMann
XXX-Laughton-XXXI don’t hate that top 6 to start. If Marner is walking and Marchand is too long/expensive then save your bullets for the trade deadline to add to the top 6. Spend a bunch on some really good 3rd liners. Maybe improve the D. Weaponize that cap space.
They have Reaves, Jarnkrok, Kampf to help fill that out already. Holmberg is RFA and so is Robertson. They pretty much have a roster IF they wanted to. I hope and believe they will make some changes but they have a lot of guys to take spots for the moment.
Personally, I can see Kampf,Jarnkrok moved. Maybe Reaves? Open up space for bringing back the likes of Patches and space for Cowan.
I can’t see anyone being interested in Reaves. If he retires his cap hit is a problem, but otherwise he’s either walking into LTIR or a Marlie that costs us $200k against the cap.
Kampf played in 1 playoff game, was -2 at 5v5 in the game, and his line was outshot 8-3. I can’t see them wanting him back. I know as a fan I don’t – for a defensive specialist, he loses too many battles and contributes too little.
Similarly it’s the second year in a row where Robertson was sat in the playoffs. I didn’t think he was awful this year, but while he isn’t good at defense, overall his line was better with him than they were without. It’s obvious the Leafs don’t want him and if I were him, I’d want out, too.
Jarnkrok . . . I mean, geez. He’s been pretty unimpressive. 30 playoff games with the Leafs, 1 goal, 3 assists and -4 at 5v5. He loses almost all his battles. Whatever it takes to jettison him, I’m for.
And Holmberg is a (sort of) tough call. You see these moments in his game where you think he might have more but then you realize he’s 26 and 95% of the time when tries to be fancy, it doesn’t work out and then he gets steamrolled for his efforts. He’s almost like a momentum machine for the other team. Realistically I think you can do better than him just about anywhere, but if they have loyalty, he could be a Marlie sitting on the depth charts.
I sincerely feel they need to get rid of all of those guys and just get a new bottom-6 that compliments Lorentz and Laughton and fits in with a higher level of compete and battle. I want them to win more puck battles than they lose – and our current bottom-6 loses WAY more puck battles than they win. And it should be noted that I am giving Laughton a fuckton of rope in this based on his previous play because he didn’t really impress in the blue & white last year.
Marner scored 35 goals one season and 30 in another. In no other season has he scored 30 or more in his 10 years in Toronto.
Making up things, moving goal posts or just continually saying things that are inaccurate (like pretending Marner’s ‘primary assist’ on Matthews GWG was anything special at all or his GWG wasn’t just a seeing eye muffin and instead pretending like these were highly skilled, dominating plays) over and over again doesn’t make them the truth.
The Leafs don’t need to worry about ‘replacing’ Marner’s offense they have enough without him.
His PK can be replaced at a fraction of the cost with a defensive specialist.
They need a better balanced roster and Marner’s departure will allow them to do just that if Tre makes moves that work out.
~Cush29I think it’s a little unfair to undersell Marner’s value to the team. I mean since 2020 he’s 5th in TOI in the league – on a good team, so it’s not like he was getting the TOI strictly because the team around him sucked. During that time he’s one of 52 players to have more than 2 30 goal seasons (if you’re curious, Draisaitl, Matthews and Rantanen are the only ones with 5); among top-6 forwards (basically using 18+ minutes ATOI as the default and scaling it to forwards with 180gp over 5 years), there are 88 qualified forwards and he’s 33rd in goals and 3rd in assists. He is also 7th in points.
There have been portions of each of the past several seasons where he was noticeably our best player and a guy who was carrying the team through some hard times.
In short, there are definitely times when he will be heavily missed.
There’s a decent chance they are going to get balance from this and if it can elevate the level of compete in the bottom-6 and perhaps provide more compete up-and-down the lineup, we will like parts of the team much more. But I’m not happy to see him leave – but I am happy to not have to deal with his contract demands.
I do agree that they will likely be a better penalty killing team without him. As much as I appreciate what he does on the PK, his performance had been diminishing year-over-year as other teams worked the puck around him and as he became less explosive in his acceleration.
We’ll see what happens but there will be an adjustment period that’s likely going to suck for sure.
Not worth a penny more than 2. He sucks balls in the playoffs vs. the Panthers, he sucks defensively and he’s old. If the goal is to save the most money, then Columbus would be winning the Cup every year. Facts are facts, Tavares sucks. It’s so funny though watching people call Marner a soft regular season only player yet he has more career playoff points than Tavares and played better against tougher competition. Tavares provides negative value in the playoffs. That’s the part that the idiots just can’t understand.
You can spout off all you want, but the value projections are based on his value-add and 74 points in 75 games and being +19 at 5v5 grants him a lot of leeway. At the end of the day, Pacioretty-Tavares-Nylander were +3 against Florida at 5v5. The line struggled with Holmberg on the wing instead of Patches because it was like playing short-handed. Florida isn’t a team you go up against and handicap one of your top-2 lines.
I do think the Leafs future lies in getting a #2 centre with grit and moxy and that could push JT to the wing because at 35, he’s just not going to be the long-term centre.
In terms of the performance against Florida – he wasn’t good, but neither was Nylander. Objectively, despite getting some nice bounces, Pacioretty was slow and didn’t offer a ton defensively either – but it was a far sight better than Holmberg! But $5m isn’t expected to carry a line. You can be mad at Tavares because his $11m contract was never realized for the value it cost and what it may have cost the team. I’m certainly not going to hold it against him that his next contract may take some of that into financial consideration.
Hence the average frustration with Marner – no matter what you think of him. His value to the team was exceptional, no doubt – but it likely never crossed the $9.5m threshold on average and his play in the playoffs was all too often eclipsed by the expectations placed on him due to his exaggerated contract. When the contract was coming up, there was never any consideration from him that he could give back some of what he’d taken to the town he supposed loves so much – but rather his expectation was to seek a contract large enough to continue to cripple the organization’s flexibility. Who cares if you win as long as you get your cut of the pie? Now much of that is conjecture mixed with hyperbole but there’s enough truth in there as well that I understand why people are hoping the door hits him on the way out.
Prior to the cap no one in Toronto ever had to care if a player was overpaid. It was never a problem. But now it carries consequences.
I agree, I’d dump Ekblad if I were Florida and forced to do so but he could come cheaper than expected. His offensive stats were pretty bad, his positive drug test my scare off some teams and his history of concussions aren’t to be forgotten either. His best days may be behind him but he may settle to take a discount to stay in a good situation on a long term deal that keeps his cap hit low.
Then again, you could sign a guy like Burns to replace him for a fraction of the price and risk, which is what I’d hope the Leafs do to solve their missing RHD problem in the short term.
Because of the tax rate in Florida, the weather, why would any of them want to leave a guaranteed winner with a window wide open to win again? Just the same way some other players took discounts already and Tampa Bay players took discounts, it’s likely these guys see a good thing and will keep it together.
They could also move guys like Rodrigues to make space for the more important pieces which would give them 22 AAV instead of 19.
Also, remember, now that Florida is a proven winner, there will be many players happy to take less to sign there to fill those “reclamation” slots like Schmidt took up so filling up the lower end of the roster could be really cheap and easy.
~Unholy_Goalie41 year old Brent Burns is not a solution anymore. If you look at almost all underlying numbers on Carolina, he was being propped up by the forwards’ aggressive forecheck and by Slavin as a partner for 95% of his minutes. This year his giveaway totals doubled / 60 compared to previous years and his takeaway numbers shrunk. If you want to be good at defense, Brent Burns is not going to provide any modicum of a solution any more.
While I recognize that Florida could insulate him with a similarly heavy forecheck, I don’t think Zito wants guys he’s insulating. He wants guys who can contribute in the right system with the right style around them. Burns being a giveaway machine in his waning years is definitely not going to help with that. They’d be better off trying Klingberg. This is not a shot at who Brent Burns was – who was an exceptional top pair defenseman. It’s a commentary on his age and his reflective play this year.
it was rumored that Bennett was either offered / was to sign an extension with Florida 8×8. Marchand was rumored to be asking for 8M as well but not sure on the length of the contract.
Finding the next Wilson/Bennett/Marchand type player going to hard for the Leafs with the lack of pick in the next few years. Teams that do have them aren’t given them up unless you overpay to acquire them.
~dmntedRight now, Florida has 8 forwards, 5 defenseman and 1 goalie for next year. Their farm system is exceptionally light – maybe Sourdif slots in for them next year. He’s an RFA but he’d likely come in under $1m.
But really they need to sign at least 3 forwards, 2 defenseman and a goalie. Because of Bob, they’ll probably go cheap in net and get a guy like Samsonov, or maybe re-run Lyon or Kahkonen. They have to resign RFA Samoskevich after a 15G, 31pt rookie campaign. Maybe $1.5 or $2m?
The big names here are Ekblad, Marchand and Bennett. If they decide to forego Ekblad, they can likely take a run at both Marchand and Bennett, resign Samoskevich, compliment the Forwards and have about $4m left to sign 2 defensemen. I’m guessing Schmidt is priced out considering he was an $800k reclamation project.
Their balance will definitely allow them to keep one of those names. If I were them I’d make it Ekblad.
