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Leaf Rumours

soco22 said:
He hasn't signed kessel. Not a winning offseason without the extension!
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You do realize very few players will sign a year before their contract expires right? I'm sure there are talks going on between Nonis and Kessel/agent about a new contract.... relax things will play out the way they are supposed to. How can you not call it a winning season? The guy got rid of that useless twat Grabo and replaced him with one of the best shutdown centres in the league, he managed to trade a bunch of scraps for Bernier, he bought out a plug in Komi, he managed to sign Raymond for a cheap deal, he brought in size/grit/toughness in Clarkson, and not to mention he managed to get BOTH Kadri and Franson inked to short term/cap friendly deals.... I'd call that a winning off season.
 
MindzEye said:
Suter, Parise, Kovalchuk, Brad Richards

The common denominator is that all of them left their previous situations due to ownership/financial instability.
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Yup. If the big money is offered. The player feels great pressure to take it. What if you get injured before you hit UFA and you turned down that guaranteed money?

Rick Nash was in a terrible situation in Columbus, but he had to take that massive contract they offered him.
 
Pronger84 said:
You do realize very few players will sign a year before their contract expires right? I'm sure there are talks going on between Nonis and Kessel/agent about a new contract.... relax things will play out the way they are supposed to. How can you not call it a winning season? The guy got rid of that useless twat Grabo and replaced him with one of the best shutdown centres in the league, he managed to trade a bunch of scraps for Bernier, he bought out a plug in Komi, he managed to sign Raymond for a cheap deal, he brought in size/grit/toughness in Clarkson, and not to mention he managed to get BOTH Kadri and Franson inked to short term/cap friendly deals.... I'd call that a winning off season.
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There's several problems with this though. Firstly, Grabbo wasn't a useless twat.

Secondly, it's great that he bought in Clarkson, but that contract could get ugly pretty quickly.

But mainly, he got Kadri and Franson on 'short term cap friendly' deals because he mismanaged the cap and had no choice - there was no more money to offer them without making moves. And I'm not sure those great short term deals are going to look so great if they have the seasons we hope they will have and Franson, for example, can then come back next year and demand loads more.

An offseason where you sign Bozak to a ludicrous long term deal and fail to get rid of Liles and his contract, despite conceding that you don't intend to play him, can hardly be considered a 'winning offseason.'
 
j_15 said:
There's several problems with this though. Firstly, Grabbo wasn't a useless twat.

Secondly, it's great that he bought in Clarkson, but that contract could get ugly pretty quickly.

But mainly, he got Kadri and Franson on 'short term cap friendly' deals because he mismanaged the cap and had no choice - there was no more money to offer them without making moves. And I'm not sure those great short term deals are going to look so great if they have the seasons we hope they will have and Franson, for example, can then come back next year and demand loads more.

An offseason where you sign Bozak to a ludicrous long term deal and fail to get rid of Liles and his contract, despite conceding that you don't intend to play him, can hardly be considered a 'winning offseason.'
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Sounds like most of your issues deal with negative 'what if' scenarios.

Clarkson - might be worth every penny of his contract
Kadri and Franson did sign cheap cap friendly deals this year, which helps us this year
Bozak signing might keep Kessel here, and he might improve

Changing the spin to think optimistically obviously, but my thoughts are that for this year, Nonis had done a pretty good job.
 
Did Nonis improve the team?
Did Nonis manage a shrinking cap?

Yes, and hell yes.

If a teams greatest problem is too much talent, demanding too much money - that's a great problem to have.
 
i think nonis deserves a lot of credit for what he did this summer.

the liles contract was not movable. full stop. the deal wasn't his doing. and in a year where a guy like ryan whitney is on a PTO, with the depressed cap, you aren't going to find a suitor for liles at $3.8mn. at least, without taking on any salary which the leafs could not do.

i don't like the clarkson deal. that's a lot of money to pay for a guy with his skillset. he won't be a 30 goal guy in toronto, either -- the bottom line is that with lupul and kessel in the fold he won't see the 3:30 of pp time he saw last year (1/3 of his goals over the past two seasons have come on the powerplay). and if he isn't scoring 30 he flat out isn't a $5+ mn player. even if he is scoring 30 he isn't.

but the thing that i like about this off season is that nonis managed to improve the roster from last year despite losing nearly $7mn in cap space. that isn't easy to do -- especially when you have $2mn in totally dead weight.

this team is deeper, faster and bigger than last year. they are better in goal, they are better up the middle, they are better on the wings. replacing grabovski and macarthur with bolland and raymond is a terrific swap. bolland is a pretty big defensive and physical upgrade over grabovski, and the offense is a wash (grabo and macarthur combined for 36 points last year; raymond and bolland combined for 39)... combined, bolland and raymond earn less than grabovski would have earned.

as for the kadri signing -- it had to be a bridge deal. they need every penny they can muster next year to re-sign kessel, phaneuf and reimer, plus deal with the fact that bolland, mcclement and kulemin are all pending ufas. it would have bene nice to save a mil or two per on a long term kadri deal, but the extra $3-4mn next year would have hurt.
 
Kritter said:
I can see Liles being trade deadline fodder... A team in need of a vet for a play-off run willing to trade next to nothing for him. I think we have loads of $$ to sign the works next off-season.
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Problem is that he's signed for 2 more years. Even for free, nobody will take him. And especially if he's been a healthy scratch/AHL fodder for most of the season, I doubt anyone would line up for him.
 
UWHabs said:
Problem is that he's signed for 2 more years. Even for free, nobody will take him. And especially if he's been a healthy scratch/AHL fodder for most of the season, I doubt anyone would line up for him.
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A team with a need to fill due to injury would be the top candidate imo. People are talking as if he isn't a good player. It speaks volumes about the Leaf d corp that he is considered a spare part at this point in time. Don't assume he isn't an extremely serviceable defenseman, because he is.
And at trade deadline, when a teams season is hanging in the balance, prices can become sketchy, we have seen it before. And if the Leafs are simply looking to dump him, that price becomes cheap.
 
late in the year when teams have some extra coin because of injuries and the apportionment you might find a taker given that the cap is going up next year. the leafs can probably take on some salary at that point, too.
 
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