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General Leafs Talk v2.0

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mr grieves said:
To my eyes, the team did well drafting through taking on bad contracts (Franson, Gardiner), using the undrafted FA pool (Bozak), lucking into a few castoffs (Lupul, Grabovski, JVR), winning a trade outright (Phaneuf), actually developing a few quality pieces (Reimer, Kadri). I think there's a good, competitive core in there, even if we didn't have a Toews, Datsyuk, or Crosby on the top line or Chara, Pronger, or Lindstrom playing 30 minutes a night.

It's not a roster I'd pick to win the Cup, but I don't think the house is on fire. The Leafs have a lot of pretty good players hitting their prime at about the same time. Seems competitive enough in a league where the superstars don't move but (at least) they do weaken the rest of the roster.
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But where I keep coming back to is if you think, as I sort of do, that winning a few playoff series over the next few years is the realistic height of what that group can accomplish, why sweat it at all? If what you talk about doesn't put the team closer to assembling the sort of talent heavy roster that teams have been using to win cups, why go down that road?

When I used the house on fire analogy it wasn't so much to paint the current team as a catastrophe, it was to highlight the folly in dwelling on small things when the much bigger issue remains to be dealt with. I don't care about preserving a core that isn't good enough to win it all. If a team comes along without guys like Toews or Datsyuk and Pronger and wins the cup? I'd see the wisdom in it but right now it seems like the way you win is with the big pieces and if none of the approaches get them then there's no real difference between them.

mr grieves said:
Burke's using free agency mostly to find stopgaps (Connolly, Komi) wasn't really going to adversely affect the team's ability to keep that core together. But I'm not sure about Nonis's "extension" of Burke's philosophy: he hit early July like he was really going for it.
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But it was always part of Burke's plan to really go for it at some point and that involved using the free agent market. We saw it with Burke's pursuit of Richards and his interest in the Sedins. Adding big pieces via free agency was crucial to this team ever adding the big pieces it needed. Did Nonis go for it and not come away with those pieces? Absolutely, but as I said I think the "mediocre" crop of free agents you're talking about is going to be a legitimate trend going forward. Clarkson isn't a great piece but he's a good one and he was willing to sign in Toronto. I don't think Nonis keeping his guns holstered in the probably futile hope that something better would come along someday and be willing to sign on is a realistic or useful option.
 
Nik the Trik said:
But where I keep coming back to is if you think, as I sort of do, that winning a few playoff series over the next few years is the realistic height of what that group can accomplish, why sweat it at all? If what you talk about doesn't put the team closer to assembling the sort of talent heavy roster that teams have been using to win cups, why go down that road?
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Well... fatigue? After a decade of bad teams, ugly hockey, and depressing results, I wouldn't mind seeing the Leafs get the most they can out of this core.


Nik the Trik said:
When I used the house on fire analogy it wasn't so much to paint the current team as a catastrophe, it was to highlight the folly in dwelling on small things when the much bigger issue remains to be dealt with. I don't care about preserving a core that isn't good enough to win it all. If a team comes along without guys like Toews or Datsyuk and Pronger and wins the cup? I'd see the wisdom in it but right now it seems like the way you win is with the big pieces and if none of the approaches get them then there's no real difference between them.
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If you think I've been tedious on the team going with Bozak over Grabo, how dull would it be to just repeat "gets em no closer to franchise center, Cup" until 2027? If nothing but the longue dur?e is worth our attention, that seems an argument against participating in discussion forums about sports.


Nik the Trik said:
But it was always part of Burke's plan to really go for it at some point and that involved using the free agent market. We saw it with Burke's pursuit of Richards and his interest in the Sedins. Adding big pieces via free agency was crucial to this team ever adding the big pieces it needed. Did Nonis go for it and not come away with those pieces? Absolutely, but as I said I think the "mediocre" crop of free agents you're talking about is going to be a legitimate trend going forward. Clarkson isn't a great piece but he's a good one and he was willing to sign in Toronto. I don't think Nonis keeping his guns holstered in the probably futile hope that something better would come along someday and be willing to sign on is a realistic or useful option.
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Burke went after a few big free agents, yeah, but he never ended up signing any that left the team less able to hold onto its core or without the flexibility to take on a bad contract and acquire a better piece than you'll find on the free agent market. Maybe he would've thought, this summer, the next step was to harder at those UFAs... We can't really know. Had he, I'd still think it was a bad idea. 
 
mr grieves said:
OldTimeHockey said:
mr grieves said:
Was it that the team will likely end up having to buy out Bozak too?
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Why do you feel that will happen? They obviously like him more at 4 million than Grabovski at 5 million.
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For reasons stated above.
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Except that you're ignoring one very very significant key difference between the two situations. The Leafs basically had a "get out of jail free" card that they used on Grabovski. They don't and won't have that option with Bozak.
 
bustaheims said:
Hampreacher said:
Quick idea Liles and Bozak for Stasny possible? Good idea?
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Stop trying to make Stastny to the Leafs happen. It's not gonna happen.
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Nope. I don't see it either. Though I'm not eliminating the possibility that Liles to the Avs could... at some point.
 
bustaheims said:
mr grieves said:
OldTimeHockey said:
mr grieves said:
Was it that the team will likely end up having to buy out Bozak too?
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Why do you feel that will happen? They obviously like him more at 4 million than Grabovski at 5 million.
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For reasons stated above.
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Except that you're ignoring one very very significant key difference between the two situations. The Leafs basically had a "get out of jail free" card that they used on Grabovski. They don't and won't have that option with Bozak.
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Well, if $4.2m for a 50 point center is the market rate, I don't think a $4.2m, 30 point third liner is going to be something you can trade until the cap's increased to inflate salaries 30%.
 
mr grieves said:
Well... fatigue? After a decade of bad teams, ugly hockey, and depressing results, I wouldn't mind seeing the Leafs get the most they can out of this core.
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Well, as someone who's gone through 20+ years of not having the Leafs ever seriously threaten to win a Stanley Cup I hope you understand that "We've done things wrong for 10 years, we might as well do something slightly less wrong going forward" isn't super compelling.

mr grieves said:
If you think I've been tedious on the team going with Bozak over Grabo, how dull would it be to just repeat "gets em no closer to franchise center, Cup" until 2027? If nothing but the longue dur?e is worth our attention, that seems an argument against participating in discussion forums about sports.
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No, it's just an argument that if we're going to discuss how we want the Leafs to progress we don't need to be blinded by what's gone wrong in recent years and let it cloud our opinion on what the right path is to go down. Most people can separate what they think will happen and what they want to happen. That I think the Leafs are going down the wrong path doesn't mean I don't want the team to succeed or mean that post hoc analysis has to consist of discussions about the right path. It also doesn't mean I have to pretend like a very marginal difference in the team's long term prospects is really a big deal or worth obsessing over.

mr grieves said:
Burke went after a few big free agents, yeah, but he never ended up signing any that left the team less able to hold onto its core or without the flexibility to take on a bad contract and acquire a better piece than you'll find on the free agent market. Maybe he would've thought, this summer, the next step was to harder at those UFAs... We can't really know. Had he, I'd still think it was a bad idea.
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Well, we can come to some reasonable conclusions. We can look at the way Burke built the team at conclude one of two things either A) he planned to add the major pieces the team needed/needs via free agency or B) he decided that the team didn't need those major pieces. Neither one speaks well to his long term plans.

I mean, earlier you said that Burke's approach was going "somewhere" but going somewhere isn't anything special or noteworthy. With the kind of resources at his disposal building a moderately competent team is the absolute minimum he should accomplish and JFJ's colossal failure was just that he couldn't accomplish even that. Burke didn't assemble, nor did he have a good plan for assembling, the sort of core that was going to turn the Leafs into a top echelon competitor. Nothing Nonis did this off-season was going to change that short of blowing the team up.

So if you're going to get this worked up about what Nonis did because, if I can sum up, it possibly potentially puts the Leafs at risk of maybe not being able to keep the core together provided the cap doesn't rise at a certain rate and every single player on the club develops in an expected way I think a worthy rebuttal, aside from the more elementary "hey, we can wait and see if that plays out before declaring it the world's greatest catastrophe", is that it's not that great of a core regardless. That doesn't  question the validity of discussion in any general sense, just that really ridiculous one.
 
mr grieves said:
Well, if $4.2m for a 50 point center is the market rate, I don't think a $4.2m, 30 point third liner is going to be something you can trade until the cap's increased to inflate salaries 30%.
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Except if we agree that Bozak got market rate and accept the premise that Bozak's production is inextricably linked to how he's used then his value isn't going to be determined by his scoring 30 points as a third liner, it's going to be how teams might want to use him. To argue that you couldn't trade Bozak at that price you'd really have to make the argument that there won't be a team out there that would want a 50 point first line centre at 4.2 million.
 
Nik the Trik said:
mr grieves said:
Well, if $4.2m for a 50 point center is the market rate, I don't think a $4.2m, 30 point third liner is going to be something you can trade until the cap's increased to inflate salaries 30%.
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Except if we agree that Bozak got market rate and accept the premise that Bozak's production is inextricably linked to how he's used then his value isn't going to be determined by his scoring 30 points as a third liner, it's going to be how teams might want to use him. To argue that you couldn't trade Bozak at that price you'd really have to make the argument that there won't be a team out there that would want a 50 point first line centre at 4.2 million.
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If Bozak's not going to be on the trading block until he's being used somewhere other than the first line -- that is, until it's decided by the Leafs management that he's become expendable -- then the 50 point first line center at 4.2m will be a distant memory. And I think I'd only have to make the argument that GMs have short memories. 
 
mr grieves said:
If Bozak's not going to be on the trading block until he's being used somewhere other than the first line -- that is, until it's decided by the Leafs management that he's become expendable -- then the 50 point first line center at 4.2m will be a distant memory. And I think I'd only have to make the argument that GMs have short memories.
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But, at the same time, we just saw a $3.375M ~35 point centre get moved rather easily in a summer where the cap dropped fairly significantly to a team that intended to use him on the 3rd line. We also saw an older $5.5M centre with recent injury issues who has recently been a ~35 point guy get moved to a team that hopes his production will rebound, despite the fact that the last time he played a full season his team's top line, he only put up 36 points - and that was 4 seasons ago. In neither case did the team moving the player have to add anything to make them appealing to the other side, or retain any salary. Both teams received reasonable returns. If the cap continues to rise, by the time Bozak is no longer playing on one of the Leafs' top 2 lines, $4.2M for a defensively responsible 3rd line centre who is good on the draw and has offensive skills will almost certainly be market value and could very well be seen as a discount.
 
mr grieves said:
If Bozak's not going to be on the trading block until he's being used somewhere other than the first line -- that is, until it's decided by the Leafs management that he's become expendable -- then the 50 point first line center at 4.2m will be a distant memory. And I think I'd only have to make the argument that GMs have short memories.
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I don't know if that's particularly realistic given some of the contracts we've seen dealt in the past. With a rapidly rising cap the idea that a GM would look at a guy with upside like a Bozak on the third line as a workable piece, especially if the Leafs look at him as dead salary and don't want anything back, doesn't really seem far fetched at all.
 
bustaheims said:
mr grieves said:
If Bozak's not going to be on the trading block until he's being used somewhere other than the first line -- that is, until it's decided by the Leafs management that he's become expendable -- then the 50 point first line center at 4.2m will be a distant memory. And I think I'd only have to make the argument that GMs have short memories.
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But, at the same time, we just saw a $3.375M ~35 point centre get moved rather easily in a summer where the cap dropped fairly significantly to a team that intended to use him on the 3rd line. We also saw an older $5.5M centre with recent injury issues who has recently been a ~35 point guy get moved to a team that hopes his production will rebound, despite the fact that the last time he played a full season his team's top line, he only put up 36 points - and that was 4 seasons ago. In neither case did the team moving the player have to add anything to make them appealing to the other side, or retain any salary. Both teams received reasonable returns. If the cap continues to rise, by the time Bozak is no longer playing on one of the Leafs' top 2 lines, $4.2M for a defensively responsible 3rd line centre who is good on the draw and has offensive skills will almost certainly be market value and could very well be seen as a discount.
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Eh. You and Nik make fine sense here.

Who's the "older $5.5M centre with recent injury issues who has recently been a ~35 point guy get moved to a team that hopes his production will rebound, despite the fact that the last time he played a full season his team's top line, he only put up 36 points - and that was 4 seasons ago"?
 
mr grieves said:
Who's the "older $5.5M centre with recent injury issues who has recently been a ~35 point guy get moved to a team that hopes his production will rebound, despite the fact that the last time he played a full season his team's top line, he only put up 36 points - and that was 4 seasons ago"?
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Shawn Horcoff.
 
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