The Toronto Maple Leafs Continue to be Upstaged By the Edmonton Oilers
The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers cannot avoid comparisons.
The Edmonton Oilers drafted Connor McDavid, and the very next year the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Auston Matthews, thus linking the two teams together for a generation.
Not only were they the two best players to enter the league in years, and not only were they the new Crosby and Ovechkin, and not only did they go to two Canadian teams, but McDavid came within a micro-millimetre of being a Leaf when the lottery balls were heavily in the Leafs favor but obviously didn't go their way.
For years, the Leafs looked like a much better run organization, while the Oilers hired a joke GM whose best days were long behind him, and signed a bunch of ex-Leafs to terrible contracts.
But somewhere along the line Ken Holland nabbed Mattias Ekholm, Evan Bouchard turned into a number-one defenseman, and Zach Hyman became the NHL's best sidekick since Rob Brown met Mario Lemieux.
The Leafs? They just kept losing.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Continue to be Upstaged By the Edmonton Oilers
As if it wasn't bad enough that the Oilers "mistake" of signing Hyman turned out to be a Grand Slam Home-Run, the Oiler not only made the Stanley Cup Final, with a whole bunch of ex-Leafs, but they threatened to obliterate the Leafs signature record of being the only team to overcome being down 3-0 to win the Stanley Cup.
Luckily that didn't happen, but this summer the Oilers continue to upstage the Leafs.
The Leafs signed Chris Tanev and OEL and exactly zero NHL analysts praised them or said they were among the best deals of the summer.
The Oilers, on the other hand, are coming up with aces in every hand. (capfriendly.com).
Adam Henrique, signed to a very smart, very team-friendly and reasonable deal. Literally everyone who has ever seen a hockey game knows that Henrique is better than Domi, but the Oilers somehow managed to make him sign for less of a cap hit and half the term.
Yikes!
Jeff Skinner for one year and only $3 million.
Again, he's better than Domi, has a lesser cap-hit and is signed for three less years. Craziness!
Finally, the Oilers also signed Viktor Arvidsson who is better than any Leafs forward outside the Core Four and only makes $250 K more of a cap hit than Domi, and again is signed for less term.
The Oilers signed three super-smart value-laden contracts to give them probably the best group of forwards in the NHL. The Leafs only made one smart value-laden bet, on Anthony Stolarz, but it was at a position they couldn't afford to take that route with.
Overall, the Oilers fired switched GMs and then went on to have one of the best summers of any team, after going to the Stanley Cup Finals.
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Overall, the Leafs kept their GM, had one of the worst summers of any team and appear to be a coin-flip to even make the playoffs.