Toronto Maple Leafs: Free-Agents to Target and Sign Today

The Toronto Maple Leafs and the rest of the NHL will be having a spending frenzy today, giving out millions upon millions of ill-advised money in contracts.

Here is hoping the Toronto Maple Leafs enter this melee of insanity with a degree of caution.

Free-Agency is where NHL teams get dumb and most of the players will be overpaid.  Some will even be bought out.

The Leafs should have no interest in the likes of Todd Bertuzzi or Dimitri Orlov, guys guaranteed to get too much on the open market.

As of this writing, all Leafs UFAs except for David Kampf (a huge error) seem to be hitting free agency.  This is a good thing because the Leafs would be making huge errors if they re-sign Kerfoot, Bunting, O’Reilly or Schenn.  Good riddance to them all.

Toronto Maple Leafs Free-Agents to Target

A discounted Matt Duchene will be the belle of the ball here. If the Leafs can get the recently bought out still-speedy ex-superstar signed to a cheap deal it will be an absolute grand slam.

Same thing goes for Patrick Kane or Vladimir Tarasenko (but only to $1 million or less deals).

Free-Agency should be all about value.  It should be about signing washed up millionaires with something left to prove.

Overpaying Ryan O’Reilly is going to be the dumbest thing anyone does today.  Brad Treliving should hope its not him who does it.

This year’s crop is pretty underwhelming.

IMO the best the the Toronto Maple Leafs can do is sit it out, unless one of the aforementioned ex-superstars fall into their lap at an extremely affordable rate.

William Nylander

Big Willie Styles is the main story of the day.

The Leafs either signed William Nylander last night to a contract extension or they are going to trade him.  His no-trade protection kicked in at mid-night last night, so by the time you read this, he could already be gone.

The Leafs should absolutely just shut-up and pay Nylander. He’s a superstar and he’s a homegrown talent who should play his whole career in Toronto.

If they have to trade him, one of two scenarios make sense. One,  they should consider is for a potential superstar on an entry-level deal.  That kind of cap manouvre could really pay dividends.

The second move is to move him for a #1 defenseman like Mikko Heiskanen or Maurice Seider.

Good luck with that.

Trading the Nylanders of the world never works out, and if the Toronto Maple Leafs were willing to overpay David Kampf by three-times, it’s absolutely pathetic to play hardball with Nylander.

So far, I have next to no confidence in either Shanahan or Treliving, but let’s chill out and see what happens.