The Toronto Maple Leafs will finally get their off-season underway.
It seems like forever since the season ended for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the Stanley Cup has finally been handed out and the Expansion Draft, NHL Awards, Entry Draft and Free Agency are upon us.
Even though the NHL season is extremely long, there is only about a week or so between the end of it and the peak of the off-season. There is so much going on directly after the Cup has been handed out that the off-season – in the sense that there is no hockey / hockey activities at all – is pretty much just two months long. July second through the end of August, then it’s training camp and a whole new season.
Depending on your level of NHL devotion, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. Anyways, here’s the weekly recap:
Stanley Cup
The Penguins won the Cup and congratulations to them and everything, but the point of interest for us is Phil Kessel. Since leaving the Leafs, he’s now won two straight Cups. Considering all the blame he took in Toronto for basically no reason, it’s great to see him win.
If you think about it though, what did we expect was going to happen when you added Phil Kessel to a team that already had Malkin and Crosby? It’s a crazy lineup and the Penguins it should be noted have at least played for the Cup in every year in which they’ve had a third first line player to put behind their dynamic duo, going back to to their first loss to Detroit.
If you go through it year by year, either Crosby, Malkin or Staal was hurt in the Playoffs, then they traded Staal and didn’t make the final until they added Kessel. Now, it might be a coincidence, but it probably isn’t. It’s extremely hard to exploit match-ups in the NHL and the Penguins – when they choose to deploy Kessel on a third line (which I realize they didn’t always do in the Playoffs this year) almost always get a good match-up.
This is why I’ve long said the Toronto Maple Leafs should keep their forward depth and use it to exploit other teams by employing first line players routinely against other team’s third line/pairings.
Defensemen
The Leafs are clearly in the market for a defensemen and while the names that have been thrown around are familiar to everyone (Tanev, Barrie, Vatanen, Manson) some new names were added to the mix in the last week.
They were:
Brent Seabrook – He is terrible and the Leafs don’t need him, even if he is on waivers. His contract is terrible, the Leafs don’t need his scoring and he is brutal at defense. All current Leaf options (Hunwick, Polak, Carrick) are better.
Cam Fowler – I am not sure why the Leafs are said to have interest in this player. He is great on the PP but terrible 5v5. The Leafs have a lot of offense from the blue-line already, and Fowler for a third pairing LD behind Gardiner and Rielly seems like overkill. I sincerely hope the Leafs do not go for Fowler.
Dan Girardi – A player so bad his continued existence in the NHL is perplexing. Even if Girardi offers to pay for his own hotel and flights, and collect no salary what-so-ever, the Leafs would be better off to ignore calls from his agent. Anyone who says the Leafs should add Girardi is still thinking about the NHL as if its 1998. His kind of player is not effective at all. He is terrible.
Any player – literally any player – is better than adding Girardi.
Kris Russell – Take everything I just wrote about Giradri and double it. Adding Russel is like adding a face-off expert who can’t play. Think David Steckel, but for shot-blocking. Shot-Blocking has very little correlation to wining. Probably because the vast majority of blocked shots would be saved by the goalie anyways.
More from Editor In Leaf
- Toronto Maple Leafs: Nick Robertson Healthy and Ready
- Ryan Reaves Will Have Zero Impact on Toronto Maple Leafs
- Toronto Maple Leafs: Playing Max Domi In Top-Six a HUGE Mistake
- Top 10 Scandals in the History of the Toronto Maple Leafs
- Toronto Maple Leafs: Results from the Traverse City Prospects Tournament
Conclusions
And, if you’re blocking a lot of shots, you don’t have the puck. Give me a guy with a positive possession rating any day of the week. Russell’s hero chart shows a 0 out of 10 on a shot suppression. He literally makes any team he is on worse.
The only rumour I heard that I liked was the one about Mark Pysyk, a guy who gets an 8 on the shot suppression scale.
In order, these the D I hope the Toronto Maple Leafs get: 1) Tanev 2) Manson 3) Shattenkirk 4) Pysyk 5) Franson.
Thanks for reading.