If Liljegren can hold up you can throw money at the 1RD hole and come up with a satisfactory solution and I think you can trade for a 2nd pairing LD
GDT: Trades & Free Agency
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If Liljegren can hold up you can throw money at the 1RD hole and come up with a satisfactory solution and I think you can trade for a 2nd pairing LD
keonsbitterness
Registered User
What does a bottom 10 finish in 2016-2017 have to do with that team in 2024? You keep bringing it up when it has no actual relevance. Success in the playoffs means winning the cup. Everything else is losing, and you can't really compare outcomes across these teams that have experienced wildly different situations in the playoffs, especially without context. And this is still dwelling on the past, instead of what's best for our present and future.
Some of these teams peaking this year have slightly surpassed what we've been able to do in our worst year in almost half a decade, but you still haven't explained why that's relevant to the discussion. That's a result of some questionable decisions on surrounding players this past offseason, not a result of the core, so I'm not sure how that would be an argument for trading away one of our best players.
Well, first off, X best player in any given season = X biggest cap hit is not how contracts work. There are many factors that enter into cap hits, and with guaranteed contracts, term, and players and cap constantly changing, it will never work like that. Second, you're talking about future contracts, and making proclamations about where they'll rank (ignoring that players will surpass them over the length of their contracts) and what they'll do in the future. That's not information you have. Third, you're underrating the players. Matthews and Marner have both been among the best players in the league, and all three of them have outperformed their current contracts. Fourth, you're underrating their playoff performances. Matthews and Marner are top-20 in playoff P/GP over the length of their contracts, despite experiencing massively more difficult production situations than their peers, and while providing exceptional defense that elevates them among the best playoff performers through that time.
Assuming you'd even be able to get your chosen players at your chosen amount - which is often not the case - you'd still be worse off. And not sure how you'd expect to not take back any cap in a trade.
Samsonov only played half the year, and the team actually has a superior 117 point pace with Samsonov in net, so no. The team has gotten +6.9 GSAx goaltending this year. We had a franchise-record 115 points with -21.0 GSAx goaltending a couple years ago. And yes, there have been a number of questionable decisions. We could go over individual decisions, but on a macro level, the abandonment of defense has been an issue that has hurt us.
Nobody said you had to celebrate the outcome. You should, however, recognize the quality of teams we've had.
Dreakmur
Registered User
Nobody said we didn’t have great regular season teams. You should, however, recognize the repeated playoff we’ve had.
Americanadian
Registered User
The point is that the Leafs have been passed. They don't need to stay married to a process and a core of players that have been not achieved when the team is in a worse position than when they started.
Saying Matthews and Marner have been top 20 P/GP producers during the life of their contracts and they have earned their contracts is contradictory. Matthews is finishing his contract as the 3rd highest paid player, Marner is finishing his contract as the 9th highest paid. You'd hope for better than top 20 forwards.
What exactly is worse off? The team as constructed is a perpetual disappointment. You have a generational scorer on the roster. Management would be doing a disservice to the fanbase if they wasted his entire prime with the exact same formula.
nuck
Registered User
- Aug 18, 2005
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Logically they would not have waited quite this long to make adjustments. Shanahan and Dubas spent a lot of personal capital supporting this path, and even if a do-over for them would have been different, or if they might have considered the wisdom of a change mid stream, they painted themselves into a corner. This year there was finally a possible change expressed in KDs thinking which Shanny may have supported as it seems like he allowed Tre to at least poke around for a potential Willie deal.
Kyle Dubas: "Perhaps the path needs to shift slightly. It needs to be adapted slightly. And you get in between persistence and full belief versus being a little too staunch and rigid. And I think that's the question I would take the time for myself in reflecting on the year."
It all sounds progressive except the KD change may have been no different than the Tre change that never happened. They want to trade a forward with what we'll call 90 points of value. How close they need to get to a 90 point return determines the likely hood of a change in path ever happening. Florida got their 90 point return in a younger forward than Huberdeau who plays a rarer style of game and who they will not have under contract into his declining years. Calgary got their apparent 90 point return getting a 115pt forward and an excellent right shot D for a guy that wanted out. Tkachuk created that deal by wanting out and selecting a landing spot. That was never going to happen for the Leafs.
The $11.5M in cap savings is the driver. If KD/Shanny needed a win on the return that sort of ignores the idea that the mix is a problem to be addressed and that there is a cost attached to fixing that problem. When Kyle says shift slightly but he/Shanny/Tre won't consider making the changes that are actually available, they are really saying that the old path is still somewhat viable because otherwise what the hell are they doing locking up the salaries that will freeze them to the current path?
Any change requires a management team that accepts there can be nothing close to a 90 point return and the assets returned are secondary to the roster choices all that fresh cap space creates. Its a bold move because trading a talented player for less value is usually counter-intuitive to winning, if you don't consider the importance of cap room to proper roster construction. The Leafs and Oilers have some of the best top end talent in the league but that has not shown itself to be the clear path to winning a Cup.
We're not worse than when we started. We're worse than last year, but to say that they've been passed suggests an ongoing shift, not teams doing a bit better in a down year for us, after we've been better for an extended period of time. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter what the other teams are doing. What's important is what's best for the Leafs, and that's keeping their best players. If you want to make improvements because teams have done better than us this year, then you address the areas that need improvement. You don't tear down the best parts of your team that had nothing to do with the drop-off.
Well, for one, it wouldn't be contradictory, because I've already pointed out that that's not how contracts work in the NHL, and it says nothing about the actual value of their impact. But it's also not what I said. They have been among the best producers in the league, not just top-20. The top-20 ranking was the playoffs, which is honestly pretty good considering the sample and the far more difficult situations to produce that they've faced in the playoffs than the players around them.
Of course, we also have to remember that there is more to a player than their production, especially without context, and Matthews and Marner make up ground in the other areas of the game. There's nothing unreasonable about their cap hit rankings, even if that was how they worked.
Worse off means a worse team, and a worse chance to win the cup. The team as constructed is a perpetual contender.
Management would be doing a disservice to the fanbase if they threw away these gifts due to impatience, like they have so many times before.
Fogelhund
Registered User
- Sep 15, 2007
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It's amazing that you are talking about absolute pay, and not cap % at this point. McDavid is the highest cap % player in the league.... Marner is not in the top 10....
Fogelhund
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- Sep 15, 2007
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ToneDog
56 years and counting. #FireTheShanaClan!
Post 2085 was comparing Leafs and VGK.
VGK has only been in existence since 2018 so ....
Fogelhund
Registered User
- Sep 15, 2007
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Comparing what though? From 2018 to today, the Leafs have a better regular season record... I'm not sure what your data is attempting to show, which is why I asked for clarification.
ToneDog
56 years and counting. #FireTheShanaClan!
One poster stated that Vegas has passed the Leafs and won a cup. I'm guessing that means playoff results more than regular season results.
Rebuild years were added for the Leafs to make them look worse in the comparison.
Vegas was handed the world in exchange for cash in billionaire pockets and then they made the cap a joke. Not surprising they've found success.
LaPlante94
Registered User
- Apr 12, 2011
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He played 2 less games than last year. He played double the amount of games as Jones and Woll did and if he played as well as he did last year and put up the same numbers we are probably winning the presidents trophy or at least the division. He had one of the worst save % in the entire NHL even though he was still getting wins. He didn't earn a lot of those wins, our offence did. Last year we had a fragile Matt Murray and an ECHL goalie Kallgren as our backups who still somehow put up better numbers than Samsonov this season. I know you'll try and blame management for bringing in more offence for our depth forwards over forwards who can only provide defence but it's not those players that make Samsonov to lose track of the puck and his crease and swimming around everywhere.
I celebrated when our team started winning and making the playoffs after only 1 playoff series since like 2003/04. Being happy about just making the playoffs gets old fast when the team makes zero progress in the post season in 7 years and blame depth scoring.
Americanadian
Registered User
Matthews will be the highest paid player in the league next year, the salary cap is an absolute value, salaries for any given season are measured in absolute value. Also - Marner has been top 10 in the league in cap hit or cap hit % every year of his contract. He will jump to #11 next year, his final year. There is a high probability that Marner will jump into the top 5 on his next contract and the only realistic player that will unseat him from the top 5 over the next 5 seasons is Bedard.
Cap hit % is irrelevant in any given season. Cap hit % is also only relevant for max term contracts. If a player continues to sign at less term than their comparable then cap hit doesn’t matter.
If the Leafs don’t win a cup with Matthews on the roster will you look back on this era fondly believing they followed the correct process?
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Except there's really nothing to support that. While Samsonov did not have a great year overall, we had two other goalies perform well, and our record with Samsonov is still spectacular (in fact, better), which suggests that our team outcomes weren't significantly impacted by it.
Management didn't bring in more offense in our depth forwards. They just abandoned defense throughout the roster, which is a big part of our drop-off.
That's not true at all.
If the Leafs don't win the cup with Matthews on the roster, that will be disappointing, but I'd rather look back knowing we gave it our best shot instead of looking back wondering what could have been if we didn't sabotage the team out of impatience.
They abandoned the defense because half the team’s salary is tied into four forwards when there’s a 20/23 roster to fill out… Throw in a more offensive defenceman in Rielly and that’s a ton of cap space within those 5 players.
That's contradictory. If you have a lot of cap dedicated to elite forwards and an offensive defenseman, you would want to spend more of your remaining money on defensive impacts, not less. We had tons of cap space available, and the space we had was enough to be good defensively in previous years.
Fogelhund
Registered User
- Sep 15, 2007
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Americanadian
Registered User
Which season was the cap measured by sum of players cap hit % at time of signing rather than absolute dollars?
That's different from your claim that cap hit percentage is irrelevant unless the term of a contract is 8 years.
Americanadian
Registered User
It was me who said that and I was referring to playoff results.
Refer to above post.
My apologies I missed what you referred to. I should have specified you should only use cap hit% to compare contracts of equal length. Unless you know the formula for the value of term vs cap hit%?
WTFMAN99
Registered User
- Jun 17, 2009
- 34,635
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I think this needs to be brought up more.
It wasn't until Toronto's big players needed a new contract that this became a thing, I swear to god.
Considerations for term discrepancies are necessary regardless of if one represents contracts by cap hit or cap hit percentage. Cap hit percentage is very relevant when comparing contracts.
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