Toronto Maple Leafs: Roster Cuts, Waivers and Timothy Liljegren Makes It

The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced a final round of roster cuts.

The Toronto Maple Leafs cut several players to get down to the 23 man roster Monday morning.

The biggest surprise is that Timothy Liljegren appears to have made the team.

According to capfriendly.com, the 23 man roster fits under the salary cap.

Toronto Maple Leafs 23 Man Roster

The Leafs trimmed the roster down to 23 players, and that means that Nic Petan, Kenny Agostino, Kevin Gravel and Garrett Wilson are on waivers.

Yesterday the Leafs placed Jordan Schmaltz, Pontus Aberg, Ben Harpur and Tyler Gaudet on waivers.   So far none of those players has been claimed.  If all eight squeak through, then the Marlies will be stacked with NHL quality players.

A team like the Oilers should take about six of those guys, but we’ll see what happens.

Also, Korshkev goes to the Marlies, sans waivers.   Kalle Kossila and Mason Marchment were injured, so they’ll go to the Marlies as well.  Matt Read has been released from his PTO and signed an AHL deal with the Marlies. (NHL.com).

As expected, Dymtro Timashov has made the team, although he likely slots in as the Toronto Maple Leafs 13th forward, behind a fourth line of Nick Shore, Jason Spezza and Freddie Guathier.

Ilya Mikheyev and Trevor Moore, have, as expected, won jobs on the third line with Alexander Kerfoot.

The real surprise is on defense, where the Leafs exposed decent bottom line options (Schmaltz and Gravel) to waivers in order to keep the waiver exempt Timothy Liljegren with the club.

There is all sorts of ways to read into this situation, for instance, there a lot of players on waivers right now, so sneaking in some of the other guys to the AHL might be easier today than in a month.

What is worth noting, however, is that Liljegren makes slightly more money than all of Harpur, Gravel and Schmaltz, so they must have felt he deserved it.  Then again, maybe it pays to get as close to the cap as possible, so his slightly higher salary might have counted in his favor.

The Leafs could be playing cap games, he could have actually made it, who knows?  I doubt he made it, as he’d have to have beat out Marincin or Ceci for a job, since he is unlikely to be sitting in the pressbox.  Then again, his pre-season was pretty good: 53% Corsi, positive in expected goal ratio, and only 5 of 23 shifts started in the offensive zone. (stats from naturalstattrick.com).

All in all, who know? Time will tell. All I do know is that this roster is extremely impressive, and it fits in under the cap.  The season starts Wednesday.