Rejoint: août 2018
Messages: 6,310
Mentions "j'aime": 2,226
While Nylander is the most "moveable", hes also the cheapest and probably brings the least return (bar Tavares and his NMC).
Too many Leaf proposals are about maintaining the almost exact squad they have now and cutting corners to fit in a 20 skater lineup. To me, if the Leafs dont go beyond the second round this year, then real change is needed, and that change is all about fixing the cap structure with 3 forwards eating 33mil.
Im not saying you blow up the team, but theres no youngsters coming up and a ton of lge minimum stopgap bandaids like kase, clifford and simmonds cant be the answer for team depth.
Muzzin is done and Mrazek was a big Dubas mistake, but how much does it take to drop them, they have little value. Nylander makes 7mil and has good trade value, but can you replace his production and have cap space to fix other things with that 7mil? Probably not. I'm not jumping on the trade marner wagon, but realistically you could bring on 2, maybe 3 quality players for his cap hit, I'm not sure yiou can say the same about Nylander.
Theres so much cap at the top end, that TOR has only 5 players making between 2.1 and 6.8 mil, just 5. Thats alot of lge minimum/non-rookies filling gaps and it makes it difficult to upgrade. (again think about how many trade Kerfoot, Holl and Mrazek posts and those are your midlevel salaries). Midlevel salaries like Kapanen, Johnson, mccann, hyman, brown are easy to move, but the Leafs are running out of moveable players/commodities, and right now 3 of those midlevel salaries (Muzzin, Mrazek and Holl) have little value in trade.
Some fans expect a nylander for a nylander or a marner for a marner in trade, and it doesn;t work like that. But if you could get a Koneckny and a prospect/pick/s for Nylander and have 1.5mil free it helps to build a TEAM. (Or, and this is a quick example, so dont lose it,: trade Marner for say Faksa, Gurianov, Hakanpaa and a 1st rounder). Suffice to say if the Leafs cant win with this suffocating cap structure, then change is needed.
Icing the same team with the same inabilities does nothing but just help pass the years until Matthews, Marner, Nylander are UFAs, (and they wont take pay cuts and I doubt the cap jumps enough in the next 2-3 yrs to cover their increases)