The Toronto Maple Leafs Top 5 Mistakes of the Summer
By James Tanner
Going to Arbitration
Goaltending is a position based on confidence.
Therefore, it’s probably a bad idea to go into a room and argue to his face why your goalie isn’t worth the raise he wants.
It’s also a bad idea to let an arbitrator decide how much your starting goalie gets paid.
It’s also a bad idea to move on from the league-leader in high-danger save-percentage.
Sure, you don’t want to overpay a goalie long-term, but there is nothing wrong with giving him a bit of an overpayment if the deal is for just a single year.
Playing hardball with your starting goalie is risky and what is the point? Especially when you’ve already shown you’ll overpay players like a drunken sailor on payday.
If the Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t want Ilya Samsonov, they could have named Joseph Woll starter, used Matt Murray as best they could and picked up a draft pick for the group 2 free-agent.
Either sign the guy or trade him, but the last thing you want to do is take him to arbitration.
Such a bad idea it’s crazy it’s only the third worst thing they did this summer.
That’s right – there are two things the Toronto Maple Leafs did this summer worse than taking their star goalie to arbitration. That alone is mindblowing, but at least only one of them can be blamed on their new GM.