Speculation: Leafs rushed the rebuild

[Throw More Waffles]

Leafs did not rush the rebuild. We're a very good team a season or two away from becoming a great team. We've still got a healthy group of prospects who should make a positive impact soon enough.

If anything, our rebuild got accelerated due to the quality of players we were able to draft and develop in a short period of time.

We are already at a point where the leafs are going to lose depth due to the cap. And while Marner and Matthews may continue to grow(maybe... utterly elite players usually have their career high's by 22), Tavares will slowly start to slide.

This season was probably the year that the leafs were best on paper. Hereafter, the cap insanity the leafs are facing will destroy their depth and be nothing but a problem.

 

[Leafsfan74]

They weren’t ready to add a huge UFA like Tavares. The timing they had to make a choice and I get it. I said at the time how much I hated the decision.

Here it is now proving to us all why it was the wrong one. Yes he’s a hell of player but he destroyed the cap structure on the team. Leafs should of re signed their core before going after Tavares.

That should of been priority number one not getting another high priced forward. It arguably took away 3 years of us being competitive. Can’t even imagine what the Marner contract will look like either. Fact is also Tavares was a luxury not a need at all.

Doubt Matthews contract looked like this if not for Tavares.

Reported asks for Marner 9X8 and Matthews 12.34*8 in the summer (although Matthews there was a lot of different insider opinions on what the number in the summer was but either way it was 8 years.)

You can't choose when a player like Tavares is going to become an UFA. If the Leafs had traded prospects for him, yes, it would be rushing. They gave up nothing but cap space and signed him to term.

He is a major part of this rebuild, which to me is now rebuilt. It's just tweaking and moving past the first round. Which I might argue they should have done two times against the Bruins.

 

[Skin Tape Session]

No, there is never a bad time to add a guy like Tavares.

Thread/

 

[Commander Clueless]

T

That should of been priority number one not getting another high priced forward. It arguably took away 3 years of us being competitive. Can’t even imagine what the Marner contract will look like either.

How was this figured?

 

[NightTrain1]

The "rebuild" is over. We are now a contending team looking for that recipe to carry us to the next step which this year should have been the 2nd round or the conference finals at least. We can and should have beaten the Bruins. I just dont care what anybody else says at this point, we are the better team overall and beat ourselves. I personally put a lot of the blame on coaching at this point with a few minor issues from the GM office but overall this team is better than its results. Now the problem is there are many teams that can claim they are better than their results, but the Leafs are legit.

We have TWO franchise centers.
We have a franchise winger
We have a 1st line winger
We have a 30 goal 2nd/3rd line center
We have multiple 2nd and 3rd line wingers that can score.
We have a couple of young forwards that are ready or close to being regualar NHL players
We have a Norris quality defenseman
We have a legit top 2 defenseman
We have a legit top 4 defenseman
We have a star goalie.

There is no rebuild anymore, we are in re-tool and re-arm phase for the next 5 years. CAP will be a problem this year and we most likely are going to lose a couple people and perhaps some of our star talent is not the correct star talent for this team, I guess we'll find out.

 

[dubey]

Just a quick bump to see if anyone’s opinion changed

I don't get it

You are trashed for 14 pages and come back for more

lol

 

[moon111]

I think fans are a lot more impatient then the Leafs are. To the Leafs management and coaching, they look at someone like Matthews as a player who needs develop his game. He could come in and snipe goals. Great, but what else? He's a long way off from being a great playmaker. His defensive worked wasn't the best. This entire season for him was to improve his game. I don't think fan's expectations = a quick rebuild.

 

[Moonman]

the OP is right, we rushed it.

now we can't afford to make the team any better and are reliant on our weak minor league system to sustain us against our cap issues.

 

[BigDaddyTMac]

the OP is right, we rushed it.

now we can't afford to make the team any better and are reliant on our weak minor league system to sustain us against our cap issues.

You mean our championship winning team???ha ha

 

[BigDaddyTMac]

They weren’t ready to add a huge UFA like Tavares. The timing they had to make a choice and I get it. I said at the time how much I hated the decision.

Here it is now proving to us all why it was the wrong one. Yes he’s a hell of player but he destroyed the cap structure on the team. Leafs should of re signed their core before going after Tavares.

That should of been priority number one not getting another high priced forward. It arguably took away 3 years of us being competitive. Can’t even imagine what the Marner contract will look like either. Fact is also Tavares was a luxury not a need at all.

Doubt Matthews contract looked like this if not for Tavares.

Reported asks for Marner 9X8 and Matthews 12.34*8 in the summer (although Matthews there was a lot of different insider opinions on what the number in the summer was but either way it was 8 years.)

If you can add a player like JT, you do it. He didn’t cost anything

 

[Moonman]

You mean our championship winning team???ha ha

I didn't say AHL and I didn't say we're devoid of talent. I said were were weak (after some graduating and trades) and I stand by that.

 

[HeroNtF]

So if San Jose signed Tavares to 13mil, you don't think Matthews would want that or more ? It would of all trickled down the same.

Remember being against the cap with Kessel and phanuef as our two best players ? I think if needed, we have alot of pieces we can trade and get great value in return, it's when you can get any value and you're up to cap that youre in trouble.

Chill and see how this plays out.

 

[NightTrain1]

I have a new question then...if we dont sign John Tavares what does this season end up looking like?

Would we have brought back Bozak? Does Dubas cave to Nylander early and give him 8million or more? How do we get the 47 goals that Tavares had and where do we find the 8 game winning goals he provided.

If our farm system is weak, we dont get Tavares and we still lose most of what we lost from last year do we even make the playoffs? Given how things progressed this year I would say no. we still dont have Nylander for 2 months, we dont have our incredible start to the season and we dont make the playoffs, we dont get Muzzin, we keep our first round pick but just miss the playoffs so its somewhere around 12-16.

 

[Marmoset]

I'm not going to read through all of this, but I see lots of comments about how we rushed the rebuild by signing Tavares.

Perhaps this is true, but I think we were out of the rebuild phase by virtue of the performance of the team. However, the way I see it, you sign Tavares which costs no assets besides cash, and if you need more cap space, you trade Nylander for other assets. Problem solved. You've upgraded a position and can trade the other player for futures/young players/etc.

The only reason to have a cap crunch is if we insist on trying to keep everyone.

 

[Stephen]

I think fans are a lot more impatient then the Leafs are. To the Leafs management and coaching, they look at someone like Matthews as a player who needs develop his game. He could come in and snipe goals. Great, but what else? He's a long way off from being a great playmaker. His defensive worked wasn't the best. This entire season for him was to improve his game. I don't think fan's expectations = a quick rebuild.

The story of an offensive juggernaut that needs to learn to play more urgent, grittier, two ways and finally understand what it takes to win it all is an age old narrative. You often can not bypass those growing pains before winning.

 

[Buds17]

I have a new question then...if we dont sign John Tavares what does this season end up looking like?

Would we have brought back Bozak? Does Dubas cave to Nylander early and give him 8million or more? How do we get the 47 goals that Tavares had and where do we find the 8 game winning goals he provided.

If our farm system is weak, we dont get Tavares and we still lose most of what we lost from last year do we even make the playoffs? Given how things progressed this year I would say no. we still dont have Nylander for 2 months, we dont have our incredible start to the season and we dont make the playoffs, we dont get Muzzin, we keep our first round pick but just miss the playoffs so its somewhere around 12-16.

Apparently the plan beyond Tavares was either re-signing Bozak or signing Derek Ryan. There are definite differences there in quality and cap but still guesswork involved in the rest of the plans. The team obviously wouldn't be as strong down the middle but figures to have used the cap space in adding to another area/other areas.

 

[KapG]

Lol Tavares is not the problem

The dinosaur behind the bench is

 

[nuck]

I think the rebuild was rushed with the own rental of JVR and Boz. No home ice advantage and having to go thru the Bs, the Bolts and the defending Cup champions to get to the final. It wasn't the year to do that. I blame that on Lou and for that alone I am glad he is gone. This season they could have justified a spend, especially when their three best D and their best young D man are all lefties. A year early at most though because with Kadri in the lineup I think the Bruins are gone in 6 and right now we have the weakest second round playoff group that I can remember.

 

[Al14]

I think the rebuild was rushed with the own rental of JVR and Boz. No home ice advantage and having to go thru the Bs, the Bolts and the defending Cup champions to get to the final. It wasn't the year to do that. I blame that on Lou and for that alone I am glad he is gone. This season they could have justified a spend, especially when their three best D and their best young D man are all lefties. A year early at most though because with Kadri in the lineup I think the Bruins are gone in 6 and right now we have the weakest second round playoff group that I can remember.

I don't really think the rebuild was rushed by keeping JvR and Bozak as our own rentals. I think the rebuild was somewhat rushed by the signing of Tavares.

I think there was a missed opportunity to acquire some extra organizational depth by trading them both by the deadline last season. That depth could have been by having either extra draft picks and/or extra prospects. That is something our Leafs will desperately need to replace secondary support personnel, that become too expensive to retain, given that we will be right up against the cap with the signing of our core players and Tavares.

Obviously, keeping JvR and Bozak did nothing to help us get by Boston last season. I believe that Dubas and Shanahan now realize it was a mistake. However, water under the bridge.

 

[Captain Crunch]

Sign a 21 year old franchise center to 5 year contract.

"We rushed the rebuild!"

Let's never sign a Tavares type player again to the team?
Time to book an early vacation.

So you’re saying we couldn’t have used that money to help our defence out, that it was good enough? Didn’t look that great to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Tavares, and he had a great year (thank you, Mitch Marner), but our offense wasn’t a major concern. And do you not agree that we now have major cap concerns? By signing Tavares, to me, the next thing to do would have been to trade Nylander for defensive help, especially when he held out. Really hope all this doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass, which it has already started to do!

 

[PemIceKing]

Leafs did not rush the rebuild. We're a very good team a season or two away from becoming a great team. We've still got a healthy group of prospects who should make a positive impact soon enough.

If anything, our rebuild got accelerated due to the quality of players we were able to draft and develop in a short period of time.

Still building actually. People can say what they want but this current team is very talented but far from being ready for a real solid run.

 

[sabresEH]

Signing Tavares didn’t rush the rebuild. Toronto has/was doing just about everything right.

The Zaitsev contract is one I’m sure you wish you could redo.

The fact that Dubas got played in both his big contract negotiations so far hurts as well.
*I’m sure I’ll get hell for this but he did. Just because others paid RFA’s too much doesn’t mean he needed to. I don’t think these guys get those contracts with Lou around*

The third year for Marleau hurts. Quite honestly(conspiracy time) I think Lou saw the writing on the wall and “screwed” this team before he left. The Zaitsev contract still boggles me. How often has Lou handed that kind of a contract to a guy after a few games.
Any GM who has foresight would not have given Marleau 3 years. Giving him an extra mill per year for a 2 year deal with a gentleman’s agreement to sign a one year deal after for cheap is what all GM’s would’ve done. If Marleau truly wanted to come here to play for Babs this could’ve been done.

Toronto is in a tough spot but it’s a good spot to be in. This summer will show whether or not Dubas can handle being a GM right now. He may need to “hide” in an assistant or junior role before getting another job is he effs this summer up.

 

[Man Bear Pig]

the OP is right, we rushed it.

now we can't afford to make the team any better and are reliant on our weak minor league system to sustain us against our cap issues.

Make the team any better? They added a #1 center. What are you looking for here, quality or quantity? And I really dont get this "rushed" angle some of you are playing. What was rushed? You draft Rielly(#1 D), trade for a top 10 goalie, draft Nylander,Marner and Matthews. What was rushed here? Seems like the opposite to me. Was this team supposed to tank again after drafting Matthews? Is your plan is to continually tank and be able to afford all these players? Does not signing Tavares suddenly make all of that go away? Because you arent getting a better player at Tavares' price tag on the open market. When free assets come your way, you sign them and worry about other things later. Nylander can be traded. Others can be traded. Much less pieces than tavares.

 

[Tie Domi Esquire]

This summer there will be a lot of changes regardless of the playoff result due to contract expirations and cap reasons. Probably the worst moment to make this kind of thread. They added a #1 center for free. There's no real downside. Adding Tavares doesn't make the other players older. It takes up some cap space, but there are obviously worse contracts on the team taking up space. Besides he played well inspite of his usage.

Team is in a great situation roster wise in general. Zaitsev will be moved. They just have to figure out Marleau. Worst case scenario they can retain some cap and send him back to SJ to retire. That's 7-10 mill saved right there.

Plus there are a lot of great teams looking to make some changes. They might be able to pluck some talent for the back end.

 

[Duke16]

It may seem crazy, but I think our Development Staff is good enough to continually produce Johnsson/Kapanen level talent. Obviously not everyone will be of this calibre, but I think Moore might not be far off next season, Bracco is probably going to be comparable (but more offense oriented), maybe SDA is next.
We are going to ride out these types of players in their RFA years, send them off, and replace them internally. We are going to have to avoid large commitments to this calibre of player and just keep producing them. As long as we have our cupboards stocked with picks, it can happen. While Kapanen is a 1st rounder, Johnsson is a 7th, Moore is undrafted, Bracco is a 2nd rounder, SDA is a 3rd rounder. We have our stars, the complimentary talent is key.

If we keep this system working at top notch, we will be competitive for the duration of Matthews, Tavares, Marner, and Nylander's careers.