The Maple Leafs Rebuild Has Been Nothing Short Of Spectacular
That’s the Toronto Maple Leafs brain trust. Godfather Lou Lamoriello up top, and then President Brendan Shanahan and Head Coach Mike Babcock. What the three of them are doing in Toronto has been incredible. What they inherited…
That’s the Maginot Line. It was a super fortress built by France along the German border leading up to World War II. It was an expensive, ill-conceived, piece of shit that was never going to win the War for France. A foundation of Phaneuf, David Clarkson, and Phil Kessel, the big money core players on the Leafs roster, were the hockey version of the Maginot Line. Sure, they are all talented players(except for Clarkson), but they aren’t foundation pieces. You can’t win a Stanley Cup if guys like Kessel and Phaneuf are you best and highest paid players. You can’t afford to build up the rest of the roster properly if the you’ve wasted all of the your money on a fixed position. And just like France couldn’t afford a real Air Force or armored divisions, the Leafs where stuck with a hot dog eating champion as the face of their team.
Trading David Clarkson for Nathan Horton was subtly brilliant. Sure, Horton will never play again and the Leafs are picking up the check for his remaining $27M, but the Leafs are richer than Drake. They don’t care about actual dollars as long as they can hide that Cap hit on Long-Term IR.
Babcock and Lou Lamoriello pulled a bait and switch with Phaneuf. Babcock came into town and immediately started singing his praises. Oh he’s such a good leader, he’s been a really great player for us blah blah blah. All while reducing his minutes and playing him against weaker competition. The took a broken down chevy, slapped a fresh coat of paint on it, and got the Ottawa Senators to pay full value for him. All of the contracts that Toronto took back expire after next season. They swindled Ottawa.
The Clarkson, Kessel, and Phaneuf trades moved $19.05M in cap hits off of their books. Nothing kills an organization like a bad contract in a Salary Cap league. Toroto led the league in bad deals for years. It’s not exactly apples to apples, but look at the Knicks. They’ve been dead for decades now because they made bad decisions in the cap era and couldn’t get out from under them. In less that a year, the Leafs moved every bloated contract off of their books and changed the entire culture of the team. Moving one of those contracts would’ve been considered a minor miracle. Now they have money to extend young players like Naz Kadri and Morgan Rielly. And oh, they’ll probably have some extra laying around for…
If Toronto signs Stamkos it’s off to the races. It reminds me a little of what the Cubs have done with Theo Epstein. He brought hope, a winning pedigree, and professionalism to the Cubs. Without Epstein the Cubs would never be able to attract free agents like Lester or Heyward. And just like the Cubs, the Maple Leafs prospect pool is loaded. Next year the Leafs lineup could be
JVR-Nylander-Stamkos
Lupul-Bozek-Kadri
Michalek-Matthews-Marner
Leivo-Komerov-Kapanen
I don’t know how it all fits together and obviously Matthews and Stamkos aren’t a sure thing, but what is a sure thing is that the Leafs are on their way to being a top NHL team and it will happen quickly. Not only do they have a strong pipeline already, but Toronto has 6 picks in the 1st two rounds of the upcoming draft. If I were the Leafs, I wouldn’t trade their combination of prospects and assets for any other rebuilding situation in the league. And that includes Buffalo and Edmonton. The Leafs still have work to do to win the Cup(better D and goalies), but when it happens, it will go down as one of the greatest turn-arounds in sports history.
Also, new episode of Chip and Chase is available. Talking the Simmonds-McDonough sucker punch incident, the Phaneuf trade, and who would be the best Barstool Hockey fighter