Toronto Maple Leafs: Not Ready for Opening Night
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs season doesn’t begin for over two months.
But in those two months, a lot of roster moves could potentially happen, as the Toronto Maple Leafs current roster is not the one we’ll see on opening night.
Currently beset with too many wingers, too much salary and too many contracts, the Leafs are due for a move. Or ten.
What could we see as we count down the days until early October?
1. Salary Cap Adjustments
The Toronto Maple Leafs are somewhat close to the NHL’s upper limit of the salary cap. They currently have around four million dollars to spend, in addition to what they can move off the cap because of injuries.
However, there is the matter of some of their cheaper entry-level players earning bonuses, which changes the calculations. Without being absolutely certain what these are, we can at least confidently say the Leafs, as currently constituted, don’t have a lot of cap space.
Since we know that the relative cheapness of Marner, Matthews and Nylander means they have to try and challenge for a Cup this season – as cap wise, it may be their best ever chance – the Leafs obviously want to clear up some space to give them room to improve their blue line while leaving money available for trade-deadline additions.
2. Excess Roster Players
Between the club’s preponderance of wingers and players in the AHL ready to take the jump, the Toronto Maple Leafs are not ready for opening night.
The team can’t very well put Kapenen back in the minors or on the fourth line, so they’re going to have to make some adjustments with the current roster.
Without getting into it, again, the team is very obviously coming close to a decision point on both Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, as well as some borderline guys like Soshnikov, Fehr and Leivo.
3. Defense
While most teams don’t have three players who combine to be as good as Gardiner, Zaitsev and Rielly are, the Leafs still don’t have a very good defensive group.
You can’t count on Timothy Liljegren making the jump, and both recently signed Swedish free-agents seem earmarked for the AHL.
Connor Carrick may be a good player, but can his development be counted on when the Leafs are looking to be Cup Contenders?
Is Ron Hainsey someone you want playing higher than the third pairing ?(Absolutely not).
Martin Marincin is perhaps the most underrated player in professional sports history, but the Leafs defense is still not good, anyway you look at it.
No #1 guy.
No grit.
Next to no toughness.
No prospects knocking at the door threatening to become the Toronto Maple Leafs Duncan Keith or P.K Subbam (i.e a second round or later draft pick who comes out of nowhere to confound expectations).
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Basically, the Leafs back-end is a mess, and a mess that’s far too left-handed. They need a defensively respectable right-shooting defenseman to pair with Rielly and a player who is better than Hainsey to pair with Hainsey on the bottom pairing.
They can then pair Gardiner with Zaitsev and consider themselves ready to compete.
Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal for a team at the Leafs current stage to have so many problems. The thing is though, the salary cap and the three elite players on entry-level contracts has accelerated the process.
It’s time to make some moves and solve some problems.