The Toronto Maple Leafs should take a holiday on July 1st.
The Toronto Maple Leafs shouldn’t sign any of their own free-agents, and they shouldn’t sign anyone else’s either.
Not a single one.
The Leafs have Ryan O’Reilly, Justin Holl, Alex Kerfoot, Ilya Samsonov (not a UFA), Michael Bunting, Noel Acciari, Luke Schenn, David Kampf and a plus a couple of others.
Out of that group, they should let everybody go.
All will be too expensive, and not a single one of them promises to return value on an inflated contract, most stretching into years they will obviously be in decline as players.
And the same goes with any UFAs from other teams.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Farm System Can Pick Up the Slack
The Leafs don’t need to sign any free-agents because they have a whole bunch of AHL players and prospects who are ready for the big time.
The Leafs can solve their cap problems, and they can make their team better just by promoting internally and making a couple of trades.
The first thing they need to do is move William Nylander to whichever team will trade them a young defenseman with #1 potential. Be that Bowen Byram, Simon Nemec, Miro Heiskanen, Maurice Seider or someone else, it’s the first and only thing Brad Treliving should be thinking about this summer.
After that, it’s time to promote prospects to the show and see what happens.
Mattie Knies, Bobby McMann, and Roni Hirvonen, welcome to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This might sound extreme, but I assure you, it isn’t. In the NHL there is hardly any difference between the worst player and the best non-star. This clearly means teams should be promoting their own prospects way sooner, spending money on star players and ignoring almost all free agents.
The gap between Auston Matthews over Nathen MacKinnon is likely bigger than the cap between Ryan O’Reilly (no longer a star) and Frazer Minten (might not even be ready).
The Toronto Maple Leafs need to take advantage of this, by ignoring the free-agent market, promoting youth, and using the savings to trade for another star.
Math!
Science!
Stanley Cup!
Young players should be promoted to the NHL way sooner, and the Leafs should be the team that pioneers this. They have a whole bunch of prospects ready to go and the worst thing they can do is block them out by signing guys who are expensive and whose only contribution is being a name-brand.
Here is the lineup the Leafs should dress on opening night:
Knies – Matthews – Marner
Robertson – Tavares – Jarnkrok
Voit – Hirvonen- McMann
Steeves – Holmberg – Shaw
With the savings the Leafs can acquire Erik Karlsson from the Sharks, as well.
Byram – Karlsson
Rielly – Liljegren
McCabe – Brodie.
Joseph Woll / Matt Murray
This lineup will be the best the Toronto Maple Leafs have ever dressed. They have the best blue-line in the NHL and a top-heavy lineup featuring an absolute ton of stars and at least that many potential stars.
It will never happen, but I bet it would be better than whatever mess of a lineup they end up icing.