Even in his "desaster" season, Nylander still produced offensive chances at an elite rate, unfortunately, Babs in his infinite wisdom put him on the 3rd line or with the likes of Brown and Marleau, two guys that couldn't score. Nylander started slow but was back up to scoring at a 60 point pace with 3rd line minutes and ****ty linemates, if you take out his first 13 games where he had 1 point. Nylander is deadly, always has been and his best days are ahead.

Which is countered by getting rid of one of your only gritty player and getting a much worse d-man

Even in his "desaster" season, Nylander still produced offensive chances at an elite rate, unfortunately, Babs in his infinite wisdom put him on the 3rd line or with the likes of Brown and Marleau, two guys that couldn't score. Nylander started slow but was back up to scoring at a 60 point pace with 3rd line minutes and ****ty linemates, if you take out his first 13 games where he had 1 point. Nylander is deadly, always has been and his best days are ahead.

It has nothing to do with the pandemic. Any team signing 3 11M players is going to have a very hard time contending. Don't blame it on the pandemic, the league jumped from 79.5M to 81.5M. There hasn't been any huge ceiling jumps. Only talks of it. Even then, let's say it rose an extra 3M next season in theory, is that all it will take for Toronto to get that top 4 RHD and a few other pieces they need to be a serious contender? No. They should have let Nylander sit out all season, then Matthews, then Marner until they took there heads out of there greedy asses or trade them for cheaper pieces. This isn't basketball, this is hockey.

Were all the contracts signed at the same time?

Do you know what the word inflation means?

I like to describe Marleau as the ghost of Patirck Marleau during that final stretch and into the playoffs. He was visibly (to everyone but Babs) out of gas the last 10-20 games of the season.

They combine for 40.5 not 46. It's still a lot, but that's a $5.5m difference

It has nothing to do with the pandemic. Any team signing 3 11M players is going to have a very hard time contending. Don't blame it on the pandemic, the league jumped from 79.5M to 81.5M. There hasn't been any huge ceiling jumps. Only talks of it. Even then, let's say it rose an extra 3M next season in theory, is that all it will take for Toronto to get that top 4 RHD and a few other pieces they need to be a serious contender? No. They should have let Nylander sit out all season, then Matthews, then Marner until they took there heads out of there greedy asses or trade them for cheaper pieces. This isn't basketball, this is hockey.

Nylander can get 120 points and it wouldn't matter. They need pieces that the cap won't allow because of these ridiculous contracts. They will not win a Stanley Cup with 4 players making 46M.

First projections of next years cap was min. of $84M, then with expansion and a new US TV deal on the horizon, it's $90M within a couple of seasons.

Is this a Tampa fan critizing the Leafs cap situation? That is rich. How many 30+ players with term and over 5 million dollars in salaray and no trade clauses do you guys have? Gourde, Killorn, Johnson, Palat, etc you are either going to have to give away your secondary high paid depth for nothing or negative value or lose your young skilled depth in Cirelli and Sergachev. There is zero chance of any other way around this.

It doesn't matter, none of these other guys intentionally broke the bank for there own selfish greed. McDavid is very high, but that's a reward for being a giant leap ahead of everyone else.

In Torontos case, yes kind of. All 4 of them were signed
within 2 years.

I'm not a Tampa fan, this is just an alt account while my other one is suspended. Try again?

Nylander held out for term. He knew he was trade bait if he signed a bridge and he wants to stay in TO for his career (often overlooked by people that just mindlessly follow talking heads on TV like sheep).

I think this years team is better than last year's which would have beat the eventual cup finalists if they didn't forget how to PK, or if Kadri doesn't get booted.

If the cap rises to $84M they have no problem upgrading their RHD, they don't need Nick Lidstrom to put them over the top. A guy like C. Murphy, M. Weegar, etc is the only upgrade Leafs need on backend. Rielly, Muzzin, Dermott and Sandin is a perfectly capable Dcore moving forward.

Pay your forwards, draft your dmen high in the draft. It's the route Leafs are going to end up taking, come back here at the end of this 5 year stretch and then you can opine on if it was successful or not, before that point, it's very premature.

Leafs: suck at D
Dubas: hey let’s get Ceci and Barrie to fix that, it’ll help

The guy is clueless and shouldn’t be anywhere near a GM office

It doesn't matter, none of these other guys intentionally broke the bank for there own selfish greed. McDavid is very high, but that's a reward for being a giant leap ahead of everyone else.

In Torontos case, yes kind of. All 4 of them were signed
within 2 years.

You may want to check your math. Also if they won the cup this year if there is a playoffs, would you really be that surprised? Would anyone? I am certain everyone who wants them to fail more than they want their team to succeed (there are more of those than there are Leaf fans) will say they are surprised but thats just emotions. The team has elite players everywhere in their lineup, apart from defenceman that shoot right handed. St Louis didn't have any allstars at LHD last year but still won. Somehow you can only win if you 1) don't play for TO and 2) have an elite RHD. Like when Pittsburgh won when Letang was gone for the whole playoffs and Hainsey was their best defenceman, that team had so many Elite Right handed defenceman.

He ran out of gas the summer before his last season. I love the guy and if he's on your 4th line and making the league minimum I would welcome him back next season possibly, but at 6+ million or whatever insane deal Lou gave him, that was really dumb. I am sure someone with too much time on their hands could look through my comments on this site and find a time where I said the signing wasn't bad but the term was really dumb. 2 years and that deal was fine. That 3rd year was just insane. But we are talking about Lou who tried hard to aquire Parise at the deadline and I am sure is going to push Barzal out the door because he's young and young guys have to earn their money by getting underpaid in all their prime years and then overpaid in their 30's.

That's great! Now he learned a lesson. Don't sign players for double digit millions based on future cap expectations. I can't think of any GM who would willingly do that. Now they are screwed without cups xD

Btw, wasn't Dubas a player agent at some point? Unless I misunderstand the meaning of a player agent, maybe he thought it was his moral obligation to look after the players individually and financially rather than the team as a whole.

You are also forgetting about the Babcock and Lou factors.

Why would marner take less on his deal when Lou already screwed out of his Performance A bonuses? Cost him a few million dollars at least.

Also, would you want to take less money to play for a coach you don't like/hate for the duration of your contract?

I still don't love the Marner deal, but has been mentioned in this thread a few times, better to pay your stars the extra million then the Matt Martins of the world.

That is the new pretend troll thing to say to defend your lunacy. "TO is my second favourite team, so all my negative remarks are not trolling" Yeah that isn't at all transparent. I have said many times, the leafs defence under Babs was terrible. Not the defenceman, the defence as a team. They were instructed to pressure everyone all over the ice and often that led to 5 bell chances in the slot. He was fired and Keefe took over and since then the system has the team collapsing to the slot in the defensive zone which has cut down those chances dramatically. But they still allowed a lot of goals for stretches under Keefe, yes they did. Part of that was when they had a shut down pair of Holl and Marincin when Ceci, Muzzin and Rielly were hurt. I don't care what system you play if Marincin is the best LHD option to throw out against the other teams best you are going to get lit up. The other part that led to high danger chances was turnovers. Keefe's system instructs the team to hold the puck, never give it up if you can hold it. What I saw was a team that found success with that but also went to far with it and sometimes that led to turnovers at the offensive blue line that ended up turning into odd man rushes the other way. They became fewer and further between the later in the season the Leafs got and was trending in a very positive way prior to the shutdown. All of this points to good times ahead.

But obviously if this was your second favourite team, you'd know all this yourself.

The cap will not go to 84M, have you been living under a rock??

The only mindless people are Leafs fans not capable of understanding how screwed there team is.

Nylander can get 120 points and it wouldn't matter. They need pieces that the cap won't allow because of these ridiculous contracts. They will not win a Stanley Cup with 4 players making 46M.

That's great! Now he learned a lesson. Don't sign players for double digit millions based on future cap expectations. I can't think of any GM who would willingly do that. Now they are screwed without cups xD

Btw, wasn't Dubas a player agent at some point? Unless I misunderstand the meaning of a player agent, maybe he thought it was his moral obligation to look after the players individually and financially rather than the team as a whole.

Honestly, I didn't mind Zaitsev. Unfortunately his contract was garbage. He never should have been given that. He is worth 2 million and paying him an extra 2.5 million long term was not something they could afford to do. So trading him for Ceci, I agree he's worse, made sense because it gets you out from that contract. As I've said a million times, Matthews will never look bad no matter how much he's making, because he can do stuff that almost no one else can do. Zaitsev though? He's getting paid more than double what he's worth, even 1 of those contracts is a major problem, you can't move them without losing value in the trade and it prevents you from adding better players to fill holes.