The NHL Draft has come and gone and the Free Agent period is upon us, which means the Toronto Maple Leafs have made significant chances to their roster.
Over the past week we’ve seen the Toronto Maple Leafs draft 12 players and sign a handful of free agents, such as Wayne Simmonds, TJ Brodie, Travis Boyd, Zach Bogosian, and Jimmy Vesey.
We also saw them trade former seventh round pick Andreas Johnsson to New Jersey.
Toronto has committed to paying their core forwards and building the team around them. In order to pull this off, they’ve got to find value in free agency, and be able to bring in quality depth pieces on the cheap. Were they able to pull this off? Let’s find out.
New Additions
Here are the Toronto Maple Leafs new additions from the past year who will be competing for ice time on the third and fourth lines.
- Alexander Barabanov ($925K) – 26 years old – LW/RW
- Denis Malgin ($700K) – 23 years old – RW/C
- Joey Anderson (RFA) – 22 years old – RW
- Travis Boyd ($700K) – 27 years old – C/RW
- Wayne Simmonds ($1.5M) – 32 years old – RW/LW
- Jimmy Vesey ($900K) – 27 years old – LW/RW
- Filip Hallander ($764K) – 20 years old – LW / RW
These six players have either recently been signed, signed awhile back but they don’t have a contract until the 2020/21 season (Alexander Barabanov), or traded to Toronto in the last year.
The Toronto Maple Leafs depth is pretty remarkable if you ask me, not a lot of teams have this many NHL players fighting for ice time.
Now that we have gone over the seven relatively new Toronto Maple Leafs depth players let’s go over the remaining players that could fill out the bottom two lines.
- Alex Kerfoot ($3.5M) – 26 years old – C/LW
- Jason Spezza ($700K) – 37 years old – C/RW
- Pierre Engvall ($1.25M) – 24 years old – LW/C
- Nick Robertson ($821K) – 19 years old – LW
- Nic Petan ($775K) – 25 years old – RW / C
- Yegor Korshkev (925K) 24 years old – RW
- Adam Brooks (725K) 24 years old – C
There are 14 total players who will be looking to compete for the bottom six spots on the Leafs roster, and though we don’t really know about Hollander or Korshev, the rest of them can at the very least be decent NHL players who it won’t hurt the team to play. Given the probability of a condensed season, the extra depth could really pay off for Toronto.
Now that we have gone over mostly everyone that would probably fill out the bottom two lines plus some extras that could slot themselves in there as well, let’s go over about three possible line combinations for the third line and the fourth line next season.
There are countless combinations that Kyle Dubas and Sheldon Keefe could come up with for the coming season, but I think it is safe to assume that, given a healthy lineup and barring surprises, the Leafs will have Kerfoot, Robertson, Spezza and Simmonds in the lineup.
After that its anyone’s guess, but given his success in the KHL, it would also be surprising if Barabanov wasn’t a regular. Same goes for Pierre Engvall after earning an NHL job and a contract extension last year, and for Jimmy Vessey who has been an NHL regular for years now.
The team is currently slightly over the salary cap as of right now so I would assume another move is very possible for the Toronto Maple Leafs to get back under the cap, but then again, there is always the option to carry less than the maximum amount of players, and shuffle players back and forth between the NHL and AHL to accrue cap space.
Regardless of who the Leafs play on their 3rd and 4th lines next season, they have a ton of depth and that should be one of the their main strengths as they try to rebound from their loss to Columbus.