Signing Anthony Stolarz
$2.5 million annaully for a back-up is perfectly reasonable.
Signing Anthonty Stolarz is, in a vaccum, a great idea. He's only 30, has played well over the last few seasons and recently won a Stanley Cup.
He has a career .915 save-percentage as well.
You can't complain about the player or the contract.
Pair him with Joseph Woll, who they re-signed but whose deal doesn't kick in for a year, and you have a very nice combo for under $3.5 million. That's just good business.
However....
This is the rarest and most special of times: the Toronto Maple Leafs best player in franchise history is in his prime. The team, as evidenced by their other moves, is all-in on winning now.
So the Woll-Stolarz combo doesn't look so hot under those circumstances. Woll has just 39 career games and is incredibly prone to injury.
He's also a year removed from being the organziation's top prospect and has performed extremely well in the playoffs. The question is, and it's a huge question: is this the goalie combo you want when the best player in the history of your team is in his prime?
The answer is no, and even the Leafs agree because we know, for a fact, that they tried to trade for Jacob Markstrom (at the very least).
You can spin this as a high-risk high-reward play, but ultimately it seem more like bad management. The Leafs should never have had Samsonov on the roster last year, and should have tried harder to get a goalie at the deadline.
On top of everything else, the Leafs so badly need to succeed next year that I just can't wrap my head around how they think this goalie combo is successful. (They also signed Matt Murray to replace Martin Jones which is an upgrade, but really, who cares?).
The fact that they missed on the three top guys available and had to settle on going with two back-ups is lame. If we aren't talking Auston Matthews prime here, of if the team had of had more recent success, I'd be a lot more generous but overall this gets an