Trades and Free Agency - 2022-23 Season Edition

[ULF_55]

Not only that but now you have the best shooter in the game sitting in the high slot as well on top of already having someone as the net front presence with not even having a shot from the point. It’s really an all around disaster.

If only there were any examples of shooting from the half boards?

Don't look at those little shooters behind the curtain (Sundin, Stamkos, Ovechkin, ...).

 

[TMLAM34]

If only there were any examples of shooting from the half boards?

Don't look at those little shooters behind the curtain (Sundin, Stamkos, Ovechkin, ...).

I get moving Matthews from one side to the other, he’s had success on both sides… But to put him in the middle, wtf. Like I said, it’s an all around disaster at the moment.

We’re 15 games in and we have more losses than wins. Not a very good start/sign.

 

[Avilaj07]

To Toronto-
Connor Murphy
Max Domi

To Chicago-
Justin Holl
Alex Kerfoot
Nick Robertson
2nd Round Pick

To Toronto-
Jakob Chychrun
Lawson Crouse

To Arizona-
Rasmus Sandin
Pierre Engvall
Matthew Knies
1st Round Pick

Crouse-Matthews-Nylander
Domi-Tavares-Marner
Bunting-Holmberg-Jarnkrok
Aston Reese-Kampf-Malgin

Rielly-Murphy
Chychrun-Brodie
Giordano-Liljegren

 

[Griffin76]

To Toronto-
Connor Murphy
Max Domi

To Chicago-
Justin Holl
Alex Kerfoot
Nick Robertson
2nd Round Pick

To Toronto-
Jakob Chychrun
Lawson Crouse

To Arizona-
Rasmus Sandin
Pierre Engvall
Matthew Knies
1st Round Pick

Crouse-Matthews-Nylander
Domi-Tavares-Marner
Bunting-Holmberg-Jarnkrok
Aston Reese-Kampf-Malgin

Rielly-Murphy
Chychrun-Brodie
Giordano-Liljegren

All good in theory but how would the cap work?

 

[Stephen]

I get moving Matthews from one side to the other, he’s had success on both sides… But to put him in the middle, wtf. Like I said, it’s an all around disaster at the moment.

We’re 15 games in and we have more losses than wins. Not a very good start/sign.

They put the most lethal goal scorer into the high slot nothing burger role. That's where they had Kadri stashed away in his last year when his production took a nose dive. There's so much dumb-smart in that organization's thought process.

 

[TMLAM34]

To Toronto: Ivan Provorov + Travis Konecny + Scott Laughton + NYR 3rd Round Draft Pick

To Philadelphia: Mitch Marner + Rasmus Sandin

 

[Menzinger]

You honest to god think Muzzin would make a fuss over a few games if it meant the Leafs having a better chance at the cup?

No pro player is going to want to voluntarily sit out for several months if he he's healthy to play. Especially a guy who is apparently pissed for his competitiveness like Muzzin. If it's literally a couple games I doubt he'd care

I think people around here really overestimate how much LTIR fraud that happens in this league.

 

[Menzinger]

Minten - thanks JustAShadow ...
Grebinkin
Knies
Villeneuve
Krall

Is that really the extent of players over 6'?
Other than goalies.

They took a bunch of bigger boys in the 16' and '17 draft classes. The pity is they almost all busted so aren't going to stay counted among the current prospect group

 

[Dreakmur]

All good in theory but how would the cap work?

It puts us about 2.5 over the cap, so won't work. Even removing Domi, we couldn't dress a full roster.

 

[kb]

I'd add Rielly to that list just to see what a return could look like. I don't think I can do another 8 years of him on the PP.

How do you shop a player 15 games into an 8 year deal with a NMC?

To Toronto-
Connor Murphy
Max Domi

To Chicago-
Justin Holl
Alex Kerfoot
Nick Robertson
2nd Round Pick

To Toronto-
Jakob Chychrun
Lawson Crouse

To Arizona-
Rasmus Sandin
Pierre Engvall
Matthew Knies
1st Round Pick

Crouse-Matthews-Nylander
Domi-Tavares-Marner
Bunting-Holmberg-Jarnkrok
Aston Reese-Kampf-Malgin

Rielly-Murphy
Chychrun-Brodie
Giordano-Liljegren

Followed by a teardown and rebuild.

With few assets left because they were all traded for junk.

 

[uncleben]

Feels like the whole Dubas era has been an over correction on Jamie Devane, Luke Schenn, Kenny Ryan, Freddie Gauthier and Tyler Biggs type players.

The plot twist is there’s nothing wrong with those types of players. Just what is the organizational mix, if your big guys pan out and how they can be used to protect the precious skill and where you pick them in the draft. There’s just something intellectually wrong with the way the Leaf philosophy has been shaped by the past.

The plot twist is there’s nothing wrong with "Dubas" types of players. Just what is the organizational mix, if your skill guys pan out and how they can be used to compliment the precious truculence and where you pick them in the draft. There’s just something intellectually wrong with the way the Leaf fan philosophy has been shaped by the recent past.

 

[Burnie97]

He has to be more aware but seemed pretty harmless and incidental. f*** sakes.

 

[Stephen]

The plot twist is there’s nothing "Dubas" types of players. Just what is the organizational mix, if your skill guys pan out and how they can be used to compliment the precious truculence and where you pick them in the draft. There’s just something intellectually wrong with the way the Leaf fan philosophy has been shaped by the recent past.

The idea that "truculence" gets thrown around as a meme is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The entire skill vs size schism in Leaf Land would be like an MLB fanbase arguing over left handed vs right handed batters. It's a team sport and you need both things in a lineup and a GM who only prioritizes one type is no better than the next GM who only does the opposite.

I really hated the job Burke did here in Toronto, but the player types he gravitated towards were never the problem, they never went out of style in the sport. The only problem is he just signed, traded for and drafted the wrong players and didn't have a proper skill base. Now we have a skill base and an aversion to a broad swath of player types because of some strange idea that the game has changed.

 

[uncleben]

The idea that "truculence" gets thrown around as a meme is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The entire skill vs size schism in Leaf Land would be like an MLB fanbase arguing over left handed vs right handed batters. It's a team sport and you need both things in a lineup and a GM who only prioritizes one type is no better than the next GM who only does the opposite.

I really hated the job Burke did here in Toronto, but the player types he gravitated towards were never the problem, they never went out of style in the sport. The only problem is he just signed, traded for and drafted the wrong players and didn't have a proper skill base. Now we have a skill base and an aversion to a broad swath of player types because of some strange idea that the game has changed.

I don't disagree, but many people love to write off players because they are small, skilled, and/or filled this perceived idea of being a "Dubas" player

 

[Stephen]

I don't disagree, but many people love to write off players because they are small, skilled, and/or filled this perceived idea of being a "Dubas" player

My criticism is the GM is operating as if he's taken a side on the skill vs size schism as evidenced by the amount of draft capital and trade assets he's used to basically try and find the next Kerfoot.

I just want a well rounded team that can win different play styles, the right muscle to protect our valuable skill and a prospect pipeline where different types of prospects have realistic paths to promotion at different positions. I don't think we have that at all.

 

[sylejman]

My criticism is the GM is operating as if he's taken a side on the skill vs size schism as evidenced by the amount of draft capital and trade assets he's used to basically try and find the next Kerfoot.

I just want a well rounded team that can win different play styles, the right muscle to protect our valuable skill and a prospect pipeline where different types of prospects have realistic paths to promotion at different positions. I don't think we have that at all.

I don't care about size if you have guts and drive. Many nhl players in the nhl are small but they are bulldogs. Kerfoot is absolutely trash, he's a waste of good skating.

 

[pspot]

Would you trade marner for ehlers, Lowry and pionk?

 

[SeaOfBlue]

The plot twist is there’s nothing "Dubas" types of players. Just what is the organizational mix, if your skill guys pan out and how they can be used to compliment the precious truculence and where you pick them in the draft. There’s just something intellectually wrong with the way the Leaf fan philosophy has been shaped by the recent past.

The problem is that people are just looking at a player's height and weight and putting them all in one box.

Dubas has drafted a very diverse set of prospects, and the common theme amongst all of his prospects is that they are passionate, hard-working, and intelligent. Then we develop them into what we need them to be and watch them grow (physically, emotionally, and mentally). Case in point, Holmberg is 6'0", 203 lbs now according to EP. He was drafted at 5'10" 174lbs according to NHL.com. Not huge, but certainly not a guy whose size will limit him. Abruzzese was 5'9", 160. He is listed at 5'11" 183 on EP now.

The other thing is whether there were even large guys worth drafting, and for the most part, the answer to that is 'no'. Now it is still early, so things could certain change (and larger guys do tend to take longer to develop), but as it stands right now, there have been a lot of big whiffs on larger guys... Not much unlike the Hunter drafts. We are already hurting hard after those 3 drafts where a ton of large guys were selected and zero became NHLers (most didn't even come close). Instead, we took some smaller guys and a solid number of them are knocking on the door to the NHL right now. In the meantime, we also supplanting that list with a number of larger guys on AHL contracts. Some have even been signed (McMann, Marchment, Douglas, Rubins, etc.) and others have fizzled out (Brazeau).

Dubas doesn't have an aversion to larger or physical players... He just has an aversion to bad players and will not overrate or underrate a player's capabilities due to their size (at least when he drafts; there have been some iffy size-based decisions with signings and trades that have hurt him). There has been a lot of that coming from fans.

 

[justashadowof]

Dubas has been actively attempting to catch lightning in a bottle by "stealing" the next Cam Atkinson/De Brincat/Gaudreau/Kaprizov/Zuccarello at the draft and in minor trades. On that level, one can understand the strategy. If he were to hit, the team would have nabbed a star player outside the 1st round. It's the near misses that make less than ideal role players and defense depth. He has gambled on this and not got a full hit, Robertson's the closest, and may yet have a big impact, but the net result is a team still waiting on the influx of youthful and robust support talent to push the top heavy team into a real playoff threat. And what burns is that apparently they've been capable of identifying these types of NHL able-bodied prospects all this time having drafted Knies and Minten (the team's best two forward prospects) in the past two drafts.

 

[The Podium]

With Nashville struggling, how available would Jeannot be? Probably the ideal player for our top 6.

Dubas has been actively attempting to catch lightning in a bottle by "stealing" the next Cam Atkinson/De Brincat/Gaudreau/Kaprizov/Zuccarello at the draft and in minor trades. On that level, one can understand the strategy. If he were to hit, the team would have nabbed a star player outside the 1st round. It's the near misses that make less than ideal role players and defense depth. He has gambled on this and not got a full hit, Robertson's the closest, and may yet have a big impact, but the net result is a team still waiting on the influx of youthful and robust support talent to push the top heavy team into a real playoff threat. And what burns is that apparently they've been capable of identifying these types of NHL able-bodied prospects all this time having drafted Knies and Minten (the team's best two forward prospects) in the past two drafts.

The problem was the drafts prior to Dubas’ tenure. The Hunter drafts should be the current influx of ELCs 5-7 years later, now we are starting to see Dubas’ picks coming through which makes sense with the timeline.

 

[Dekes For Days]

They put the most lethal goal scorer into the high slot nothing burger role. That's where they had Kadri stashed away in his last year when his production took a nose dive.

I don't particularly like Matthews there, but this is a bad argument. That role is not a "nothing burger" role. Point, for example, had his big PP goal year there. It's also where they had Kadri through most of 2016-2018 when he was scoring a lot on the PP, not just his last year. It's all about how you set up the PP.

The entire skill vs size schism in Leaf Land would be like an MLB fanbase arguing over left handed vs right handed batters.

Baseball has made some rule changes to prevent this in recent years, but it would actually be more similar to arguing that we should prioritize players who aggressively slide into 2nd base and try to take out the thrower, over building the best team.

Now we have a skill base and an aversion to a broad swath of player types because of some strange idea that the game has changed.

We don't have an "aversion" to any player types.

 

[LeafChief]

I want more jam added to this lineup. Engvall needs to figure it out or ship him out.

 

[ACC1224]

They put the most lethal goal scorer into the high slot nothing burger role. That's where they had Kadri stashed away in his last year when his production took a nose dive. There's so much dumb-smart in that organization's thought process.

Yeah he’s needs to be in a place to shoot. This is definitely more dumb than smart.

 

[Griffin76]

My criticism is the GM is operating as if he's taken a side on the skill vs size schism as evidenced by the amount of draft capital and trade assets he's used to basically try and find the next Kerfoot.

I just want a well rounded team that can win different play styles, the right muscle to protect our valuable skill and a prospect pipeline where different types of prospects have realistic paths to promotion at different positions. I don't think we have that at all.

This is kind of a dumb comparison I'm going to make, especially if you've never played the game, but the original Nintendo Ice Hockey game as an example. My older brother would always have a balanced team between the 3 types of players. I liked all fast skilled guys and I was dangling like crazy, trying to keep possession, basically trying to pass it into the net, but if I got too close to one of the fat guys, he knocked me on my ass, passed to a medium guy who passed to the skilled guy and scored on me. All skill was too soft. All well rounded guys was boring and not enough of anything good. All fat guys was too slow and lacked skill. I realize building an NHL team is not as simple as having a well rounded Nintendo team but it kinda fits.

 

[ULF_55]

They took a bunch of bigger boys in the 16' and '17 draft classes. The pity is they almost all busted so aren't going to stay counted among the current prospect group

I was just looking at the Dubas picks. Or mostly Dubas picks, May 2018 he was made GM, so was in charge of the draft, but would not have directed the scouting operations before then. But he made the calls (obviously with input from team).

I suspect some may have grown, so perhaps more are at the 6+ feet height now that were not when drafted.