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Leaf Rumours

UWHabs said:
It's a moot point. The Leafs can't even afford him. You've got 40M locked up in like 10 players so far. Even signing him for 8M means you're only going to have about 10M to spend on another 10 or so players. Unless if you can unload a lot of that dead weight, it'd be tough to fit him in to your lineup.

Especially since someone's going to offer him either 10 years, or 10M, or maybe even both.
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Unless they play with the figures .... take a chance that sometime in the next 25 years there will be a walk away clause to help out a team (one time) and then offer kovalchuck a 25 year 100 million dollar contract.
Front load it over 4 years for 15 million a season, 4 more years at 5 million and then 4 more years at 3 million for a total of 92 million over a 13 year period. The remaining 8 years payout an average of 1 million per season for the duration. The cap hit for that would only be 4 million a season.
If he play for the leafs for 8 more years and averages 40 goals during that time ..... it will have been a worth while investment.
Bozek and Kessel on one line, and kadri and kovalchuck on the other. There is your solid solid top 4 core. Never mind what else will pop up in the next five years in the draft ... plus with Phaneuf on the d ... solid 5 core lol
 
UWHabs said:
It's a moot point. The Leafs can't even afford him. You've got 40M locked up in like 10 players so far. Even signing him for 8M means you're only going to have about 10M to spend on another 10 or so players. Unless if you can unload a lot of that dead weight, it'd be tough to fit him in to your lineup.

Especially since someone's going to offer him either 10 years, or 10M, or maybe even both.
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That's an interesting analysis of our cap position...

The Leafs have 17 roster players under contract going into next season, with just under 11 million in cap remaining (assuming the rumoured 57.7 million dollar cap). The only NHL regulars unsigned are Kulemin, Mitchell, & Hanson. Finger is also a major candidate for being buried in the minors if it's deemed necessary.

I don't think Burke will pursue Kovalchuk, but he could pretty easily throw a 8-9 million dollar cap hit contract at Kovy if he wanted to.
 
Volcanologist said:
Sure they can. They've got cap space already and it won't be difficult to get rid of Grabo and Finger to create another ~6.5m of room.
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This is what I see:
Code: 
Kessel	5.4
Bozak	3.25
Orr	1
Sjostrom	0.75
	
Phaneuf	6.5
Komisarek	4.5
Kaberle	4.25
Beauchemin	3.8
Schenn	2.975
Gunnarsson	0.8
	
Giguere	6
Gus	1.35
	
	
	
	40.575

Cap will be what? 57M or so? So you have 16 or 17M to add about 9 players. With Kovalchuk coming in at about 8M, that leaves an average of 1M per player for the rest of the lineup. Okay, that's do-able, but doesn't necessarily leave you with very much depth in the lineup.
 
MindzEye said:
wherever you got those numbers from, they're wrong.
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I wasn't including the rookies.

The big thing is you're counting the whole rookie cushion. I don't think most teams want to use that space up, since if you end up paying out those bonuses, that eats heavily into next year's cap hit.

*edit: I can come up with this:
Code: 
2010-2011 Toronto Maple Leafs
PLAYER	BONUS	CAP HIT
FORWARDS
* Kovalchuk 	—	$8,000,000
Phil Kessel 	—	$5,400,000
Tyler Bozak 	($2,850,000)	$3,725,000
Mikhail Grabovski 	—	$2,900,000
Nazem Kadri 	($850,000)	$1,750,000
* Nikolai Kulemin 	—	$1,487,000
Colton Orr 	—	$1,000,000
* Christian Hanson 	—	$925,000
Philippe Paradis 	—	$900,000
Viktor Stalberg 	($65,000)	$850,000
Luca Caputi 	($265,000)	$833,333
Dale Mitchell 	($197,500)	$759,166
Fredrik Sjostrom 	—	$750,000
* John Mitchell 	—	$487,000
DEFENSEMEN
Dion Phaneuf 	—	$6,500,000
Mike Komisarek 	—	$4,500,000
Tomas Kaberle 	—	$4,250,000
Francois Beauchemin 	—	$3,800,000
Luke Schenn 	($2,100,000)	$2,975,000
Carl Gunnarsson 	($170,000)	$800,000
* Phil Oreskovic 	—	$508,000
GOALTENDERS
Jean-Sebastien Giguere 	—	$6,000,000
Jonas Gustavsson 	—	$1,350,000
BUYOUTS
Darcy Tucker	—	$1,000,000
LOST VIA REENTRY WAIVERS
NONE
CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS
ROSTER SIZE	23
SALARY CAP	$57,700,000
PAYROLL	$61,449,499
BONUSES	$6,497,500
CAP SPACE	$578,001

Fills out the roster. Gives you .5M to play with... counting the rookie cushion. So if, say, half the rookie bonuses payed out, are you willing to play the year after with 3M less in cap room?
 
Last edited:
hockeylover said:
PLUS!! Brian Burke said he didn't want him. I dunno why everyone keeps ignoring that.
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Because Burke is very, very sneaky?

I don't know...I was surprised by the Semin rumours, because it doesn't make a lot of sense to trade Kaberle for a guy who is going to want 8 million next year when we can just buy a better player for a bit more money this year....with BigMac shooting down the existence of the rumour though, it makes a lot more sense now.


Fills out the roster. Gives you .5M to play with... counting the rookie cushion. So if, say, half the rookie bonuses payed out, are you willing to play the year after with 3M less in cap room?
Click to expand...

Just to finish my thoughts on this theoretical though...

Grabovski being moved as a dump would take care of that problem.
 
Ted Leonsis' Blog:


A remarkable thing happened this morning and I wish to thank you all.

I have received more than 250 emails and most of them are offering up thanks and words of encouragement to us as a franchise and to me personally. Your regards and good wishes are most appreciated by me and my family. Thank you. It has me energized.

Last night’s defeat was deeply personal and deeply agonizing to me. I feel like I let so many people down and my deepest desire is to build a franchise that is built to last. One that helps create wonderful lifetime positive memories between family members and between friends and communities of interest and to help bring a city closer together by winning a championship.

To fall short so early in the process this year is quite humbling.

But my personality and outlook on life is thus “if it doesn’t kill you–it will make you stronger”.

We won’t do anything rash or make any decisions out of emotional angst. We will collect our thoughts. We will be energized by our failure. We will seek to improve. We will be diligent in our research and we won’t deviate from our plan. We still intend to build around our core. We will make adjustments. We will keep our upside. We will accentuate the positives and we will tweak and change around the negatives where needed.

I am committed to hard work, to investment, to constant improvement, and to getting it “just right”.

I do not have a defeatist attitude and I am not being delusional. We have work to do that is obvious, but I am ready to get back at it starting today. Thank you for your support on this troubling and humbling day. As I have said…We have miles to go before we sleep. The woods are dark and deep. We are committed to improvement and we will be better next season. Onward. Thank you.
Click to expand...
 
From Lebrun's blog:


Keep an eye on the Los Angeles Kings; they are going to be real aggressive in trying to add a big name this offseason.

Plan A will be a run at star winger Ilya Kovalchuk on July 1. If the Kings strike out there, they might then go after unrestricted free-agent forward Patrick Marleau if he hasn't been re-signed by the Sharks. Marleau played under Kings GM Dean Lombardi during the exec's time in San Jose, so that's a natural fit.

If they can't land Kovalchuk or Marleau, then the trade route is always there. The Kings' system is loaded with assets after years of proper rebuilding, and there will be NHL teams needing salary-cap relief with forwards for sale.

But it will all start with Kovalchuk. I don't think July 1 will bring the Russian star as big an offer as the two deals he turned down in Atlanta this past season: 12 years, $101 million and seven years, $70 million.

Well, he won't get that much from an NHL team on July 1. But what about the KHL? One NHL source told ESPN.com Saturday that he's hearing the KHL is ready to lure Kovalchuk with a deal that could pay him as much as $12 million per season. I don't believe it would be that much. But as I've written before in this space, I do think the KHL will make a serious run at Kovalchuk. No question there.
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http://espn.go.com/nhl/blog/_/name/nhl_playoffs/id/5174374/look-kings-woo-kovy
 
No, but I think he's a better fit in Colorado when they sign him and 2 defenders this summer.

Colorado is going to be a huge, huge player in free agency this summer. They're on the cusp of being an elite team if they spend their money right this summer.

With the cap space they have, they could theoretically sign Kovy, Volchenkov & Gonchar

Mueller-Stastny-Stewart
Kovy-Duchene-Hejduk
Galiardi-O'Reilly-Yip

Gonchar-Volchenkov
Hannan-Liles
Cumiskey-XXXXX

Anderson

and they'd have cap space left over, scarily enough.
 
MindzEye said:
No, but I think he's a better fit in Colorado when they sign him and 2 defenders this summer.

Colorado is going to be a huge, huge player in free agency this summer. They're on the cusp of being an elite team if they spend their money right this summer.

With the cap space they have, they could theoretically sign Kovy, Volchenkov & Gonchar

Mueller-Stastny-Stewart
Kovy-Duchene-Hejduk
Galiardi-O'Reilly-Yip

Gonchar-Volchenkov
Hannan-Liles
Cumiskey-XXXXX

Anderson

and they'd have cap space left over, scarily enough.
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Don't forget Kyle Quincey.
 
Kovalchuk has to know that if he bolts to the KHL, he'll be taking a major risk. If he signs a contract for 10 million per season with an NHL team, he knows that he's guaranteed to be paid all the money he signs for. But if he signs a long-term $12 million per season contract with a KHL team, that team could be non-existant within a couple of years. Just ask Jiri Hudler.
 
Let's not be ridiculous. There's no way Kovalchuk goes to the KHL.

What I'm worried about is one of our division rivals making a move to get him, now that Burke has so considerately stepped aside.
 
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