3 things the Toronto Maple Leafs need to do before Training Camp
the Toronto Maple Leafs have to do these things before training camp
The Toronto Maple Leafs have had one of the most boring and un-inspiring off-seaons I can remember from any professional sports team I have followed.
The Toronto Maple Leafs ended their season with a wimper against the heavily favored Boston Bruins and promised changes to their roster that would end the frustration of the NHL's biggest and most disapointed fan base.
Those changes turned out to be extremely underwhelming.
The Leafs changed coaches, which, who cares? The coach is not a major change in a league where there is almsot zero stylistic variation between teams. The only difference is the voice in the room, and while that does matter, for fans it really won't make too much of a difference.
Other than the coaching change, the only other major change was just as superficial. The Leafs changed captains, which is even less important and more superficial than a coaching change.
As for the roster? It's the same, just slightly better. Chris Tanev is in, and Tyler Bertuzzi is out. Net gain from that move? One win, if we're lucky. Oliver Ekman-Larsson was added, but he is just a more expensive Giordano.
Everything else is the same. The Mitch Marner Situation hangs over the franchise like the Sword of Damocles. The Blue-Line can now move the puck slightly better, but it's old and extremely average. The forwards are good, but unless Easton Cowan and Matthew Knies take steps towards stardom, there isn't much here that is going to be better than last year.
Ultimately, it does feel like Treliving and Shanhan are out of ideas and that they will go through the motions until next year's disapinting playoff performance when they will be unceremoniously fired and we'll do the whole thing over again! Too cynical? I blame the fact that I'm a life-long Leafs fan!
So with all that said, let's see what the team has to do before the season starts.
Resolve the Mitch Marner Situation
It blows my mind that I have to keep bringing this up. The Leafs are out of options, so I can't really fathom why this is taking so long.
Let's review: Mitch Marner is the second best player in the history of the Leafs organization and if he remains here for his entire career he will be the franchise's top scorer of all time. He has been prevented from scoring 100 points in four straight years only by injuries and the Pandemic.
He scores almost as much as David Pastrnak, Mikko Rantanen and Nikita Kucherov do, and he plays elite defense. Marner is one great playoff season away from being considered the NHL's best winger, and entering the best player converation with McDavid, Matthews and MacKinnon.
In fact, his career closely mirrors MacKinnon's, who absolutely exploded in his 9th year, the year Marner is just about to enter.
The Leafs can't trade him because they lose a Marner Trade 100% of the time. It's not an option. Making it worse, their GM is clearly afraid to make a trade ever since the last one he made turned the Florida Panthers into Stanley Cup winners. Oh and he has a FULL NO MOVEMENT CLAUSE.
The Leafs can't enter the season with him unsigned and risk walking him to free-agency. It will not only be a major distraction, but every great game. Marner has will ohly drive the price up.
So they are left with the best worse option, which is to enter contract negotiations from a position of weakness and just bite the bullet.
The Leafs must sign Marner to an eight-year contract extention and accept that no one is going to like the cap hit until he lifts the Stanley Cup into the air, which, I guarantee you, he will.
Clear a bunch of cap space and make room for rookies
The Toronto Maple Leafs have basically no cap space, but they do have cap flexibility.
What I mean by that is that they have quite a bit of cap space they could theoretically open up by jettisoning some of their expensive bottom-of-the-lineup players.
For a team that has committed so much money to so few players, you'd think the Leafs wouldn't be so quick to overpay their role players, but Treliving seems completely oblivious to this fact.
While OEL is extremely overpaid for a 3rd pairing defenseman who is 33, he hasn't even played a game yet for the Leafs and isn't going anywhere. The players who can be moved are Conor Timmins, Ryan Reaves, David Kampf and Calle Jarnrkok.
Timmins is the team's 7th defender, but they also have Topi Niemela and Mikko Kokkanen looking to break into the NHL, so he's expendable. He makes $1.1 million.
Ryan Reaves is the NHL's worst player, he makes $1.35. David Kampf is the NHL's most expensive fourth liner and he makes $2.4 million. Calle Jarnrkok is below Knies, Domi, Marner, Nylander, McMann and Robertson on the depth chart. He has no obvious spot to play and is about to turn 33 and makes $2.1 million.
How any of these guys are still on the roster is beyond me. In fact, it gives me next to no confidence in management to realize that it's August, they're capped out, have an incomplete roster, and yet still have all these guys on the team.
These four players combine to make almost $7 million dollars. That is insane for this team. What are they even doing?
Decide who is the 3rd-line Centre
The Toronto Maple Leafs currently don't have a third-line centre.
It is listed as Max Domi on Daily Faceoff, but Domi was re-signed to play wing with Auston Matthews, is a horrible centre because he can't defend and needs extreme sheltering to be effective in the role. It would be extremely silly to play Max Domi at centre.
The Leafs were using Pontus Holmberg as their 3rd line centre for some of the games against Boston and at the end of the year. He might be a great 4th line centre, and is certainaly a better and cheaper option than David Kampf for that role, but he can't be the team's 3rd line centre as he just isn't that good.
The Leafs need offense from the third line, and they aren't going to get it with either Holmberg or David Kampf, who, I suppose, could be another option if they were so inclined. Certainly his salary is more tenable at a third-liner, but since he has no offense to his game, Kampf is a horrible top-nine player.
There is Fraser Minten. He could be the answer. But, he's also a low-ceiling player who probably tops out as a 3rd liner. Can he anchor a third line in his rookie year if that's his ceiling? I doubt it.
Easton Cowan likely projects as a winger in the NHL, and if he's in the NHL this year it's almost certainly on the wing, but who knows? Perhpas there is an outside shot of this happening, certainly Cowan should be on the roster in one way or another, but I would think it would on the wing with whoever ends up centering the third line.
A final internal option is to take one of Mitch Marner or William Nylander (I'd go with Marner) and turn them into a centre. This would allow you to use John Tavares on the 3rd line and would really stretch the lineup and allow the Leafs to have three scoring lines.
If the first line was Knies- Matthews - Domi, then you could have a second line of Cowan-Marner-Nylander and a third line of Robertson-Tavares-McMann. That looks good to me, but it will interesting to see what the Leafs ultimately do. They could always make a trade too, who knows?
manual
What we know is that they must resolve the Marner Situation, clear the dead weight off their roster and decide who is going to play centre on the third line.