Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t adjust the Marner contract

I also made a really long post on this, lots of the same ideas in tons of depth.

At the end of the day it was a great move at the time and now. Anyone who says otherwise is just nitpicking/a revisionist/a leafs hater/ a contrarian. 98% of signings you could make a negative argument about, but signing a top 5-10 Centre in the league is a no brainer at any price. Once you analyze the other FA and trade options in the last 2 years, the argument is over,

In 2017, the Leafs had the second best power play percentage (25%) and were tied with Pittsburgh in goals for per game (3.29). Their defence was terrible, giving up the 4th highest shots per game (33.9). Addressing their brutal defence would have been the smarter play. Instead, they signed John Tavares to an 11 mil contract which had a trickledown effect on signing Matthews and Marner. So what if Nylander held out and they miss the playoffs. This team was incredible young. Slowly building a core around Matthews, Marner, and Nylander was the right play to make. Look at how great Colorado is building around their core of guys (Mackinnon, Landeskog, Rantanen). Without Tavares the Leafs would have had about 20 mil to work with before placing Horton on LTIR that season. More than enough to sign a dman or trade for one, while still continually building.

The Leafs already their future no. 1 center in Auston Matthews, so the addition of John Tavares created more complications for them. The Leafs had one of the brightest futures in the NHL led by their young core and in about 10 years into the future, they were projected to be on top of the league. However, when Tavares signed with the Leafs, their status changed from a future dynasty to a win-now phase.
Tavares is obviously a very skilled and gifted player, the decision of signing with the Maple Leafs will end up ruining their future due to him not being a positional fit, taking up a large amount of cap space and rushing their timeline to win the Stanley Cup.

Im Pens fan but I am also a big fan of Marner (The next Kessel who will get moved to PIT in a yr) lol.

But seriously I think it was a HUGE mistake signing JT to a long contract, now if it was a 1 or 2 yr Deal when he signed until Matthews was ready to take over as the #1, I would have agreed to that.

Having 4 Forwards taking up 50% of the Cap is just INSANE.

If I was a Toronto fan I would want to try to Trade JT this off-season while his value is still high & get a better team for it.

Lets just use MIN as an Example
J.T. & Liljegren
For
- C- Stall (bf he was traded)
- RHD- Dumba
- Boldy

Yes I agree the Leafs could’ve saved some money on the RFA signings and kept Kadri while adding someone like DeMelo.

Well I adjusted Marner’s contract to show his overpay was part of the problem for Toronto’s failures so far.

Yes I agree. You basically get a franchise level without having to give up any assets, you take that every time.

I guess it’s fair to say that adding a big salary superstar veteran in Tavares complicated their rebuild and caused some confusion to the direction the team wanted to head towards. However, by signing him, they gained an additional elite center asset which should’ve given them insurance to trade someone like Kadri for an elite defenceman. The fact that the Leafs didn’t take advantage of that is where I felt they went wrong. Cuz if you get to add a franchise center as a free agent, you do it every time and move other pieces to accommodate it.

It was a free franchise player. If Toronto had the opportunity to get Tavares at a reduced price for what he could’ve got and they passed up on him, with any explanation of not wanted to accelerate their rebuild, people would be calling for Dubas’s head for his entire career. This is classic revisionist history “everything Toronto does is bad” attitudes that people put out there and then everyone else buys into. F’ed if you don’t, f’ed if you do. Also just based on the trade pieces you gain by signing Tavares, that is also a gain.

Based on this idea, doesn’t the fact that Toronto got over 80 goals out of Tavares, 2 playoff appearances, and now have a trade asset that can be used for an elite dman (their supposed biggest need), make the signing not a mistake?

I get the narrative that when a franchise superstar comes available in FA you try to go after him. Players like JT don’t hit FA hardly ever. And if you can acquire a player like him it’s usually by trade and your giving up multiple picks and prospects to do so. But the Leafs also already had a potent duo at center with Matthews and Nazem Kadri. Following his 40-goal, 69-point Calder Trophy-winning season, Matthews had 34 goals and 29 assists in 62 games that season while Kadri was trying to improve on two consecutive 32-goal seasons. TAVARES WAS NOT NEEDED. You can’t sit here and even say the Leafs are better with him. They still haven’t won a playoff series in he’s first two years. Even there record is worse:
2016 40-27
2017 49-26
2018 46-28
2019 36-25
Why do you think you see so many Nylander and Marner trades on here, finding cap space and improving the Dcore. Tavares is awesome but HE WAS NOT NEEDED

I agree that he wasn’t needed, but even while adding him, they could’ve found ways to improve the defence. Tavares is better than all of Kadri, Nylander and Marner. Any one of those guys could’ve been dealt for an elite defenceman (ie Kadri for Ellis or Nylander for Theodore). It was a matter of them not making a move like that which became the issue.

Anyway, I saw a post about how ever since Keefe took over the Leafs, they have been a middle of the road team defensively (they ranked 27th in save percentage). Considering they had Ceci, Barrie & Marincin playing big minutes (all of whom were pretty bad), that’s pretty good. This season with the addition of Brodie and possibly a breakout season from Dermott, this team should be much improved from last season.

I am super optimistic about how this season could play out. I love the additions Dubas made and even more so since there will be an all Canadian division and even the first playoff round the Leafs have a legit shot this year. But the flat cap (pandemic’s fault, no way the Leafs could have seen this) will force them to probably deal away one of or multiple key players off this roster. Which just makes having JT’s 11mil even worse. All I know is, whenever I look at the Avs, I really believe that could have been the Leafs.

Yeah no doubt it will be difficult for the Leafs to make the cap work under a flat cap after 2020/21 with as much money committed into the big 4 as they have. Even if Dermott establishes himself as the number 4 D, they still need to add depth and a goaltender which they have very little money to do so.

I don’t think anyone wants to touch Marner, so most likely it will need to be Nylander that gets moved. Although it would probably be for players on ELC.

He’s not even that overpaid 😂