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Happy one-year anniversary Damien Cox!

There haven't been many elite FA's to hit the market since the end of the 1st lockout.

I'd like to know exactly who we missed out on over that period of time.
 
MLSE makes money hand over foot, and they can't even spend a small percentage of that money on a time machine to go and get Stamkos? Greedy bastards.
 
Metalleaf said:
Wish there was an "easy" way to check that
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I took a look through a few years of TSN's free agent tracker and it basically showed me what I expected to see. There was a lot of stealth purchases that would have made sense, but the elite guys were few, far between, and the recipients of huge contracts, many of which look silly right now.
 
Blake wasn't a bad signing, he put up 63 and 53 points... not bad at all. The problem was he had one 40 goal season and a lot of fans deluded themselves into believing he could get there again annually despite him being a regular 20-25 guy, when he didn't meet the high expectations a lot of fans turned on him.
 
Just going from memory, I think Ilya Kovalchuk, Brad Richards, Ryan Suter and Zach Parise have been pretty much the cream of the UFA crop since the lockout in terms of "big names". But I don't think you'll find anyone that in retrospect thinks we missed the boat by not landing Kovy or Richards, and then Parise and Suter both signed with their hometown team.
 
These guys are so happy the second it looks like "The Sky is falling" for the Leafs, they go overboard and embarrass themselves like Cox did with this article.
 
LeafGm said:
Just going from memory, I think Ilya Kovalchuk, Brad Richards, Ryan Suter and Zach Parise have been pretty much the cream of the UFA crop since the lockout in terms of "big names". But I don't think you'll find anyone that in retrospect thinks we missed the boat by not landing Kovy or Richards, and then Parise and Suter both signed with their hometown team.
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The only good signings as big name UFA's Boston did in 1 day. The Chara and Savard signings were brilliant. And they weren't even that long-term either. Minnesota's two (Parise and Suter) come with big risks in the second half of their deals.
 
Speaking of Cox, here's his title from his latest article in the STar:

"Leafs capitalize on Stamkos’s absence in win over Lightning: Cox"

Thank god he happened to miss the one game the Leafs played against them. They would be so terrible without Stamkos!
 
leafman101 said:
Chara, Savard, Hossa (x2), Gaborik, Suter, Parise, Bouwmeester, Kovalchuck, Richards, Niedermayer.
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Yep, that would be the complete list. Out of those guys, we never had a real shot at Hossa, Suter, Parise or Niedermayer. Considering Chara signed with the Bruins about 30 seconds after free agency officially started, we probably didn't have any realistic shot at him either. Then we dodged a bullet by not signing Kovy or Richards.

The only one that's kind of a bummer is Bouwmeester, but he was pretty "under the radar" for a big name UFA signing.
 
Yep. JFJ turned down Savard though. And they never once put out a competitive offer for any of those guys. For better or worse.

Even if they weren't going to get them it would have been nice to at least throw huge money at guys like Nieds, Suter, Hossa, Chara, J-Bo and Kovy. Those are all top notch players, and Toronto should always be in on that.
 
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