Important Dates for the Toronto Maple Leafs Off-Season
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs finished their regular season on April 17th, in 10th place overall, 3rd place in the Atlantic and with 102 points.
The Toronto Maple Leafs then played two weeks worth of playoffs and ended their season completely on May 5th with a loss to the Boston Bruins.
(The team's fans - at least the ones who use social media - had a complete meltdown, which is weird since the team actually exceeded expectations - they were an underdog vs Boston and expected to lose by Las Vegas but they took it to a coin-flip in overtime of game seven, despite their GM sitting out the Trade Deadline and the majority of their star players suffering from some kind of injury or another.
If you're going to be mad about the Leafs, at least be mad about the right thing - management. The players actually did the best they could have under the circumstances).
On May 9th the Leafs fired Sheldon Keefe.
Then on may 17th, they hired Craig Berube.
What will they do next and when will they do it? Here are you important dates of the off-season.
Important Dates for the Toronto Maple Leafs Off-Season
May 30 - I know you are waiting for this with baited breath - the day the Lady Byng winner is announced. Auston Matthews was nominated, and likely will win.
June 27 - the Hart Trophy, an award for MVP that weirdly ignores the league's best player this year, will be announced.
June 28 - the first round of the NHL Entry Draft
The Toronto Maple Leafs have their first round pick, after weirdly not trading it at the deadline, which is what contending teams do. The Leafs kept theirs and lost by one goal in game seven, so this is a very, very expensive draft pick.
June 29 - Rounds 2 through 7 of the NHL Entry Draft
The Leafs don't have second, third or sixth round picks. They do have a fourth and 3 x fifths and a 2 x sevenths.
July 1 - NHL Free Agency Opens
The Toronto Maple Leafs currently have $18 million in cap space, but that number can grow to $25 million + if they ditch David Kampf, Ryan Reaves, Calle Jarnkrok and Conor Timmins.
Hopefully the Leafs are smarter this year in free-agency than they were last year. Their goal should be to avoid any of the overpriced big ticket items and to let guys like Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi move on to other teams.
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The most important date for the Leafs off-season is TBD because that's the day they land the starting goalie they so desperately need.