The Toronto Maple Leafs have signed another free agent.
Though many people thought that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be inactive in free agency due to salary cap pressures, the exact opposite has proven to be true.
On Friday the Leafs signed top pairing defenseman T.J Brodie, as well as veteran Wayne Simmonds to replace Kyle Clifford on the fourth line. On Saturday the Leafs sent Andreas Johnsson to the New Jersey Devils in order to clear salary to help pay for Brodie. In return for Andersen the Leafs got a decent prospect in Joey Anderson.
Also on the Saturday the Leafs signed depth options Zach Bogosian and Travis Boyd. As if that wasn’t enough, the Leafs signed UFA Jimmy Vesey on Sunday.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Jimmy Vesey
Vesey is a 27 year old winger who played last season in Buffalo. You may remember several years ago he was hot commodity coming out of college, and as a free agent then the Leafs tried to sign him.
Drafted in the third round of the 2012 draft by Nashville, Vesey never ended up signing with them and became a free agent after four years at Harvard. He signed with the Rangers, where he played three years.
Last year he went to Buffalo and now the Leafs have signed him. He’s a big winger who consistently put up either 16 or 17 goals in each of his first three NHL seasons, until this last year when he scored nine in the shortened season.
Looking at him on Naturalstattrick.com, Vesey doesn’t seem to have very good on-ice stats, but he has always played on lousy teams. The Toronto Maple Leafs must see something in him, and the depth scoring is always an asset.
For 900 K you can’t really go wrong.
Jimmy Vesey, signed by TOR, is a decent offensive fourth liner whose lack of defensive play has been a real problem in his career. #LeafsForever pic.twitter.com/fxkV0dvIST
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) October 12, 2020
As you can see from the chart, Vesey can score but can’t really defend. No big deal, as a fourth line winger, you usually don’t get both. The Leafs can now put Vesey into a mix that includes Robertson, Barabanov, Engvall, Spezza, Simmonds, Anderson, Boyd, Agostino, Korshkev, Petan, Hallander, Malgin and Brooks and maybe a few rookies for ice time this year.
That is excellent depth as it is 13 players, all of whom are more than likely perfectly fine on any 4th line in the NHL, competing for five jobs. In reality, those five jobs will most likely go to Robertson, Barabanov, Engvall, Spezza and Simmonds, but the other guys will serve important functions as injury replacements and job competition.
The NHL is likely going to play some for of insanely condensed schedule next season and all these players will come in handy. The important thing is that he Leafs are set to have one player in the bottom half of their forward group making over $1.5 million.
To have the kind of depth they do – 13 NHL players for five spots – at the price they’ve paid for it is exactly why they had the confidence to spend most of their money on a core group of elite players. If you look around the NHL, you’ll see that most teams don’t have anywhere near this kind of depth or skill in their bottom six, and they are almost all paying more for it.
Its sort of ironic, given the criticism the team takes, but much like William Nylander turning into a borderline franchise player, the Leafs are once again proving that they know best. As for Vesey, taken alone it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the pool of talent providing depth on the roster is now very impressive.