Avalanche @ Leafs - Nov. 10th, 7:00pm - TSN4

[CarltonTheBear]

	​
Colorado Avalanche 10-6-2, 22 points​	@​	Toronto Maple Leafs 8-9-2, 18 points​

Projected Line-ups​

Lehkonen-Mackinnon-Necas Schwartz-Nelson-Hughes Landeskog-Kadri-Roy Kelly-Svechkov-O'Connor Toews-Malinski Kulak-Makar Juulsen-Burns Blackwood​

Cowan-Matthews-Sissons McKenna-Tavares-Nylander Joshua-Paul-Lettieri Duhaime-Blueger-MacEwen McCabe-Raddysh OEL-Tanev Mermis-Stecher Bobrovsky​

Scratches​

Alex Gagne​

​

Jack Roslovic Cole McWard Morgan Rielly​

Injuries​

Josh Manson - Ankle - Injured Reserve Zachary L'Heureux - Upper Body - Injured Reserve​

​

Colton Sissons - Lower Body - Questionable Jack Roslovic - Lower Body - Questionable Morgan Rielly - Lower Body - Questionable Kirill Marchenko - Lower Body - Injured Reserve Nick Blankenburg - Upper Body - Injured Reserve Marshall Rifai - Lower Body - Injured Reserve Miles Wood - Undisclosed - Injured Reserve Elvis Merzlikins - Shoulder - Injured Reserve Max Domi - Back - Injured Reserve​

Game Notes​

COL -MacKenzie Blackwood will likely start for the Avalanche

TOR -Sergei Bobrovsky will likely start for the Leafs -Lots and lots of questions regarding the Leafs line-up for this game, starting with who will be in net. Stolarz has of course yet to make back to back starts for the team this season -The other questions are all based on who is healthy enough to play. Rielly, Roslovic, and Tanev all sat out of Sunday's game against New Jersey, while Sissons left part way due to a lower body injury. There's no update on any of their status' since then, although Tanev seems the most likely to return to the line-up

Streams​

Sportsurge OnHockey NHL66​

 

[cw]

Groulx has been added to the Leafs roster. No corresponding AHL transaction yet
Akhtyamov is also on the NHL roster. AHL transactions suggest he was returned to the Marlies Nov 8th
I do not see Lettieri on the NHL roster. AHL transactions suggest he either should be or they're behind in declaring he was returned to the Marlies

 

[Bill_Berg]

Looks like Makar is out?

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120178070279647370

Well it'll be interesting to see what Tverberg could do with that opportunity. Still hope we see Brisson given a shot eventually. He's now tied for 3rd in AHL scoring, just a point behind the leader.

 

[herman]

Tverberg called up, Lettieri sent down
Sissons on IR week to week

Current tagging room means the only Marlies available for reinforcements, other than the players we've already seen:
Luke Haymes, Brendan Brisson, Aatu Raty (maybe, not sure about QO), Michael Pezzetta
Phillipe Myers, Cade Webber

Trading out Joshua and Domi and Miles Wood would help a lot for flexibility, but I understand why neither of those is happening at this time. OEL also on the firing line if all he's providing are penalty minutes.

 

[cw]

Tverberg called up, Lettieri sent down
Sissons on IR week to week

Current tagging room means the only Marlies available for reinforcements, other than the players we've already seen:
Luke Haymes, Brendan Brisson, Aatu Raty (maybe, not sure about QO), Michael Pezzetta
Phillipe Myers, Cade Webber

Trading out Joshua and Domi and Miles Wood would help a lot for flexibility, but I understand why neither of those is happening at this time. OEL also on the firing line if all he's providing are penalty minutes.

They could send McWard down and bring up Myers to get them more tagging space as McWard is on a 2 year deal while Myers is a UFA this summer. Both are right handed

 

[cw]

Akhtyamov is on the Leafs roster along with Tverberg and Groulx. He earns $900k next season. So Akhtyamov being on the roster seems like an error due to tagging problem with next seasons cap.

 

[herman]

They could send McWard down and bring up Myers to get them more tagging space as McWard is on a 2 year deal while Myers is a UFA this summer. Both are right handed

Accounting-wise, yes. But No.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120190976455065810

he's so mad lol

 

[dappleganger]

Akhtyamov is on the Leafs roster along with Tverberg and Groulx. He earns $900k next season. So Akhtyamov being on the roster seems like an error due to tagging problem with next seasons cap.

I don't think it changes the taggins in as it already factors into the tagging space whether on the NHL roster or not, Leafs would have to trade the player to change the tagging there. The tagging issue that is a weird one involves Danford because he's not currently factored into the NHL roster due to the tagging of an ELC will "slide" (delay the start of the contract year) if the player plays in 9 or fewer NHL games in a season, even if they spend the entire year playing in the AHL. (And I think this only applies to players who sign as 18 or 19 year old players.)

In my opinion the tagging space probably shouldn't matter until Danford plays 9 NHL games. But I don't know how any of this works and I think it is stupid.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

They could send McWard down and bring up Myers to get them more tagging space as McWard is on a 2 year deal while Myers is a UFA this summer. Both are right handed

Akhtyamov is on the Leafs roster along with Tverberg and Groulx. He earns $900k next season. So Akhtyamov being on the roster seems like an error due to tagging problem with next seasons cap.

Few things here. McWard's on a one-way contract for both years of his deal so he counts towards the Leafs tagging cap regardless of if he's on the roster or not. Ditto for Akhtyamov whose contract turns into a one-way deal next season. The tagging stuff is a little complicated, especially since generally nobody has had to care about it before. Puckpedia has a good explainer here though if you're interested: https://puckpedia.substack.com/p/tag-youre-it-everything-you-and-the

Also Akhtyamov and Groulx are not called up by the Leafs right now. The Leafs 23-man roster as it stands is currently filled out by McWard, Rielly, and Sissons. They could place Sissons on the IR to open up a spot as it sounds like he'll be out 7+ days (week to week). If you're looking at the roster on the teams website, it's rarely completely up to date.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I don't think it changes the taggins in as it already factors into the tagging space whether on the NHL roster or not, Leafs would have to trade the player to change the tagging there. The tagging issue that is a weird one involves Danford because he's not currently factored into the NHL roster due to the tagging of an ELC will "slide" (delay the start of the contract year) if the player plays in 9 or fewer NHL games in a season, even if they spend the entire year playing in the AHL. (And I think this only applies to players who sign as 18 or 19 year old players.)

In my opinion the tagging space probably shouldn't matter until Danford plays 9 NHL games. But I don't know how any of this works and I think it is stupid.

It's not about sliding. Danford is 20 years old so he's past the age of his contract being able to slide. This is year one of his ELC regardless of what happens. This is how Puckpedia explains it via the link I posted above:

So, what exactly is tagging room? Simply put, tagging room is the amount of cap space a team has available to add cap charges for the following season. It operates under the offseason cap formula, counting all 2027-28 1-way contracts towards the cap limit, regardless of whether a player is currently on the NHL roster or in the minors.

For 2-way contracts, the cap charge depends on the player’s present status. If they’re in the NHL, the cap charge is based on their NHL days to date plus the remaining days of the season. If they’re in the minors, their cap charge for next season is pro-rated based on time spent on the NHL roster.

...

For example, a player like Ben Danford has a 2-way contract and is currently in the minors. If he were called up, he would go from taking up $0 in tagging room to $780,000, which is too much. It’s a similar situation for William Villeneuve.

 

[cw]

Few things here. McWard's on a one-way contract for both years of his deal so he counts towards the Leafs tagging cap regardless of if he's on the roster or not. Ditto for Akhtyamov whose contract turns into a one-way deal next season. The tagging stuff is a little complicated, especially since generally nobody has had to care about it before. Puckpedia has a good explainer here though if you're interested: https://puckpedia.substack.com/p/tag-youre-it-everything-you-and-the

Also Akhtyamov and Groulx are not called up by the Leafs right now. The Leafs 23-man roster as it stands is currently filled out by McWard, Rielly, and Sissons. They could place Sissons on the IR to open up a spot as it sounds like he'll be out 7+ days (week to week). If you're looking at the roster on the teams website, it's rarely completely up to date.

Thanks for that and the link

That was a major misunderstanding/ignorance on my part.
However, I think they're more screwed up than I thought
Aside from the 7th dman, this bubble team is signed up for next season AND has tagging issues. "Hey Auston, Deja vu? Re-sign here!"
I doubt they would have had this problem as severely if Pridham was still around.

This is a multi-billion dollar franchise and they can't keep their roster up to date? That is not very good.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

That was a major misunderstanding/ignorance on my part.
However, I think they're more screwed up than I thought
Aside from the 7th dman, this bubble team is signed up for next season. "Hey Auston, Deja vu? Re-sign here!" and has tagging issues
I doubt they would have had this problem as severely if Pridham was still around.

The Marchenko trade is of course what ultimately threw the Leafs into this issue. It was probably tough to see that coming when the Leafs made their flurry of 2-year deals on July 1st. And even if they did think a trade like that was going to be a possibility at some point later in the offseason, nobody could have seen the Leo Carlsson offer sheet coming soon after which turned Marchenko's next contract from a $8-10mil per year deal to $12.5mil.

Obviously the Leafs definitely fumbled something with the tagging rules during the Marchenko trade negotiations but at the end of the day I don't blame them for putting themselves into a tight spot like this in order to get a talent like him. Hopefully at some point they can clear out Joshua and Wood's contract, which I don't think should necessarily be seen as impossible. And if we finally get clarity about Domi's career then moving a fully LTIR deal like that happens somewhat regularly.

 

[rjd]

Thanks for that and the link

That was a major misunderstanding/ignorance on my part.
However, I think they're more screwed up than I thought
Aside from the 7th dman, this bubble team is signed up for next season AND has tagging issues. "Hey Auston, Deja vu? Re-sign here!"
I doubt they would have had this problem as severely if Pridham was still around.

This is a multi-billion dollar franchise and they can't keep their roster up to date? That is not very good.

 

[ZBBM]

The indomitable Avs are a full 4 points ahead of us. I wonder if people are jumping off ledges in LoDo.

 

[rjd]

The indomitable Avs are a full 4 points ahead of us. I wonder if people are jumping off ledges in LoDo.

If they lose to the Leafs tonight they might be.