He's from NJ who will be in the market for a goalie. If they do not land Markstrom, I can see them being the team to throw money at him.
Only a matter of time before SLC with all their picks and prospects passes us. I wonder if Mitch likes the weather in Utah.
The team has not won the cup yet, and the team is currently having a comparatively down year due to some questionable management decisions, after three consecutive 111+ point seasons. The core is not the problem though, and they are not "actively getting passed". They remain top tier players, and getting rid of them would only result in further drop off.
Giving Willie that money in the first place was the insanity. He had 54 points in his first 37 games and after signing the deal is 43 in 43. He is currently 4 points ahead, and 7 goals behind his best career comp Forsberg who is signed for $3M less per year with peanuts in bonus's and a modified NT his last two years of the deal. WTF Tre?
The bolded is only true if we don't have a great plan for the excess cap space. If we do have a great plan then it's worth serious consideration.
I feel pretty comfortable saying they've been passed by NYR, Carolina, Florida, VGK, Colorado, Dallas. All teams that have finished bottom 10 in the league, or started their franchise during the Matthews/Marner/Nylander era.
And we don't. The argument is never that we need to trade Marner to execute a realistic plan where we increase the overall impact from that cap space by doing X, Y, and Z. And even in that scenario, Marner should be the 2nd last place we should go to open up that cap space. The argument is always that we lost in the playoffs in the past, so purge anything that looks remotely familiar, even if they're the best parts of your team and aren't the reason you lost, and we'll figure out the rest later. That's not a great plan.
We can afford to lock up Knies long-term. He shouldn't be too expensive, and we've had cap hits in the range he'd fall in, even without the rapidly rising cap we'll have now.
Vegas hasn't finished bottom 10, and is below us in the standings FYI.
They're not overpaid relative to their peers, or their impact, and we have still have enough to effectively fill out the rest of the team.
The defensemen that play 23 minutes per night have a very wide range of cap hits and impacts.
Wasn't expecting this. Great news! Excited to see what he can do in North America.
I corrected my statement. Vegas didn't exist when Matthews/Marner/Nylander entered the league and they've since won a cup.
All the teams mentioned have been more successful in the playoffs than the Leafs despite bottom 10 finishes in the Matthews/Marner/Nylander era, thus they have surpassed the Leafs.
Matthews will be the highest paid player in the league. He is not the best players in the league. It's arguable but he's not. Nylander will be paid as a top 5 player in the league, he's not even close. Marner is paid as a top 10 players in the league. He has not been that this year. None of these players have come close to being top 10 performers in the playoffs.
I'd take Montour+Demelo at 11M this off-season + whatever Marner returns in a trade>Marner.
We need more than depth in the goaltending position. We haven’t had a real number 1 since Belfour (Andersen is debatable) and it keeps being one of our weak points. I’d be going all out for Saros this summer. Knies and Cowan would be off limits but everyone else I’m more than open to moving from our young players and prospects. Toronto’s 1st, Robertson + Niemela.
The problem is, assuming that pay is based upon playoff results. It never has been, and never will be.
On the flip side, we have Jumbo and the Sharks, the Sedin and Canucks. Both made it and lost in the SCF. We are not even close.
Sakic and Yzerman aren't really fair comparables. They both played in an era with no cap, teams could afford to keep their best players while also adding.
Questionable decisions? We easily win the division and possibly leading the NHL in points if Samsonov wasn't garbage for 75% of the season. These management made questionable decisions posts are just stupid now and you look ridiculous especially when one of those so called questionable decisions had to carry the goaltending load when Woll went down and when we had enough of Samsonov and stopped playing him and gave him time off or else we'd be even further down the standings. 2 of those other questionable signings have looked very good with Matthews who has even been a 2 PPG player I believe since Marner went down with an injury and got put with them. 1 questionable signing was to help a weakness we had which was lack of puck movers on the backend and he's been on LTIR and not counting towards the cap all year so that signing hasn't hurt us. Reaves is the only one you can say that is questionable and that's only because it's a 3 years deal which is also very easy to get rid of and bury in the minors, even though he's bee good since returning from injury. All those 111+ point seasons and no playoff success and we should celebrate? Have analytics really blinded some of you this much?
The Leafs currently have a hole at 3C. Once Tavares expires the Leafs have a hole at 2C and 3C. I don't think re-signing Tavares is the solution. I also don't think the solution will be cheap. I think the Leafs would be better off investing 11-12M into a 2C instead of a 2RW. Likewise I think they'd be better investing big money into a 2D instead of a 2RW (I'm referring to either of Nylander or Marner). If you re-invested the 22M from Marner and Tavares into three 7M players (2C, 1RD, 2RD/LD) the Leafs are probably a better, more balanced team.
