With Gardiner Gone The Toronto Maple Leafs Didn’t Really Improve Much

The Toronto Maple Leafs had a busy summer.

The Toronto Maple Leafs made two blockbuster trades, and signed several free agents.

Overall, it’s hard not to like the direction the Leafs are going.

They’ve filled in holes – adding Alex Kerfoot to be a strong defensive presence they were missing among their forwards, and Tyson Barrie as the elite right-handed defenseman they lacked.

They also added a lot of depth, in Nick Shore, Jason Spezza and Garrett Wilson (among others).

But the question of if they are a better team always rested on Jake Gardiner.

Toronto Maple Leafs Lost Gardiner

The Leafs are deeper, and they are more balanced.

But studies show that hockey is a game where elite talent matters more than both of those things.

Here are two facts that concern me:

Jake Gardiner is a better overall player than Tyson Barrie, regardless of position.

Nazem Kadri is a better overall player than Alexander Kerfoot, even if Kerfoot is a better defensive player.

I still believe that overall, the Leafs can be better this year than last year, thanks to internal improvement, their power-play and one goal games.

But a lot of those things are just hopeful.  You can’t really know whether or not a team will have good fortune in the dozens of factors that are luck-based and contribute to the NHL standing’s final rankings.

What I was hoping is that the Leafs would retain Gardiner, thus adding one more first-line level player to the roster.  With Gardiner gone, the fact remains that the Toronto Maple Leafs lost two high-end players, and added two slightly worse high-end players.

Obviously they can’t really address this unless they make a trade, which is unlikely to happen till later in the season, or at least until the Mitch Marner saga works itself out. 

At this point, I would expect the Leafs to enter the season with the roster they have and see what happens.

However, if they did want to add another elite level player, the cap hits of Codi Ceci and Zach Hyman are almost $7 million, so assuming the LTIR situation allows them to fit Marner in without trouble, this could be an option later in the  year.

Then again, maybe Zach Hyman can be an elite player.  He is never going to score like one,  and it’s possible that last year was teammate-driven, but he did post first line quality impacts.

I don’t think he scores enough to maintain that, but we’ll see.  The bottom line is that the Leafs, as much as they did right this summer, lost two impact players and replaced them with slightly worse versions.