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Unofficial 2013-2014 Armchair GM Thread

Liles traded for no one except cap space and maybe a conditional pick

Rielly plays till Franson signed then intermittenly

Colborne gives guys on bottom two lines rests

MacWilliam gives Fraser a rest

Hopefully everyone stays relatively healthy
 
OldTimeHockey said:
I think that'd be bad for Rielly's development.
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It would also really be a waste of a year of his ELC. Either he's in the lineup pretty much every night or he's in junior. Anything in between just doesn't make sense.
 
While I like the Mason Raymond (presuming here) soon-to-be signing, I hope it doesn't come at the expense of Joe Colborne.  My hope was that McClement would play wing on the third line with Bolland and Kulemin, which would be a pretty formidable shut-down line.  The fourth line would have one of the brawlers with Colborne at centre and somewhat line Carter Ashton, in what would be an energy line but also have the potential to chip in offensively a little bit.

If I'm not mistaken, Colborne needs to clear wavers if he doesn't make the team, right?  Not sure what value he'd bring in throguha  trade.  To me, he's a really intriguing prospect that, I hope, has a chance to show what he can do.
 
A Weekend at Bernier's said:
While I like the Mason Raymond (presuming here) soon-to-be signing, I hope it doesn't come at the expense of Joe Colborne.  My hope was that McClement would play wing on the third line with Bolland and Kulemin, which would be a pretty formidable shut-down line.  The fourth line would have one of the brawlers with Colborne at centre and somewhat line Carter Ashton, in what would be an energy line but also have the potential to chip in offensively a little bit.
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I like McClement, but I do think that he's best served as a 4th liner/PK specialist. I was a little underwhelmed by him whenever injuries struck and he was bumped up to the 3rd line last season. He seems to have problems getting the puck out of the zone when he's not able to just ice it without a stoppage. And he's pretty much a blackhole offensively. I think a Raymond-Bolland-Kulemin 3rd line can be just as good defensively and provide a fair bit more offensively. 

A Weekend at Bernier's said:
If I'm not mistaken, Colborne needs to clear wavers if he doesn't make the team, right?  Not sure what value he'd bring in throguha  trade.  To me, he's a really intriguing prospect that, I hope, has a chance to show what he can do.
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He will have to clear waivers, but I doubt the Leafs try to sneak him down. Even if Raymond sticks Colborne can still be the teams 13th forward and step in when injuries strike. Or maybe Carlyle won't see the need to dress both McLaren and Orr on a consistent basis and Colborne can form the 4th line with one of those two and McClement.
 
Raymond provides better balance for the 3rd line. McClement should be on the 4th line with Colborne and Orr. McLaren will probably miss the start of the season anyway with that broken finger.

The top line should only ever step on the ice when the Leafs have the puck. The 2nd line will be much better equipped in terms of puck possession with the addition of Clarkson. The third line is going to see a lot of ice time IMO so you don't want them to be completely devoid of offence.
 
I understand the perspectives on McClement but he is certainly not "devoid of offense".  17 points in 48 games last year (which is 29 over 82 games) playing primarily with Orr and McLaren is actually quite an impressive feat.  2011-12 in Colorado is in fact the only year he even came close to scoring less than 20 points over a fulls eason.  He won't fill the net, but nor would he be an anchor to guys like Bolland and Kulemin.
 
A Weekend at Bernier's said:
I understand the perspectives on McClement but he is certainly not "devoid of offense".  17 points in 48 games last year (which is 29 over 82 games) playing primarily with Orr and McLaren is actually quite an impressive feat.  2011-12 in Colorado is in fact the only year he even came close to scoring less than 20 points over a fulls eason.  He won't fill the net, but nor would he be an anchor to guys like Bolland and Kulemin.
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Given the injuries to players like Lupul and Frattin last season McClement actually spent most of the season playing on the 3rd line with two of Grabovski/Kulemin/Komarov. And the majority of his points were scored there too. Still, I guess a 30-point pace isn't awful considering his role and minutes.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
A Weekend at Bernier's said:
I understand the perspectives on McClement but he is certainly not "devoid of offense".  17 points in 48 games last year (which is 29 over 82 games) playing primarily with Orr and McLaren is actually quite an impressive feat.  2011-12 in Colorado is in fact the only year he even came close to scoring less than 20 points over a fulls eason.  He won't fill the net, but nor would he be an anchor to guys like Bolland and Kulemin.
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Given the injuries to players like Lupul and Frattin last season McClement actually spent most of the season playing on the 3rd line with two of Grabovski/Kulemin/Komarov. And the majority of his points were scored there too. Still, I guess a 30-point pace isn't awful considering his role and minutes.
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McClement also has better Faceoff % numbers than Bolland.  I was checking out Bolland's last 5 games in the playoffs where Bolland had: 33%, 12.5%, 40%, 60%, 40%. A regular season average of 46.1%

McClement 51.6%
 
Dreger speculated today that the Leafs might not keep a 13th forward on the roster and that they'll only carry 21 players. That's 12 forwards, 7 defencemen, and 2 goalies.

If the Leafs sign Franson to a 2-year deal worth $3mil, don't sign Mason Raymond, keep McLaren and Colborne up, and go with Ranger/Liles/Fraser as the 5-7 defencemen, they'll have $333,333 in cap space.

If they shaped the roster a little more towards what I want and signed Franson to that contract, replaced McLaren with Raymond (at say $925k) and replaced Fraser with Holzer (purely for cap reasons really) they would have $245,833 in cap space. If they kept Fraser over Holzer the cap space would go down to $108,333.

So it's not impossible to get both Franson and Raymond under contract (assuming Raymond is willing to sign for that much), it's just not exactly ideal.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Dreger speculated today that the Leafs might not keep a 13th forward on the roster and that they'll only carry 21 players. That's 12 forwards, 7 defencemen, and 2 goalies.

If the Leafs sign Franson to a 2-year deal worth $3mil, don't sign Mason Raymond, keep McLaren and Colborne up, and go with Ranger/Liles/Fraser as the 5-7 defencemen, they'll have $333,333 in cap space.

If they shaped the roster a little more towards what I want and signed Franson to that contract, replaced McLaren with Raymond (at say $925k) and replaced Fraser with Holzer (purely for cap reasons really) they would have $245,833 in cap space. If they kept Fraser over Holzer the cap space would go down to $108,333.

So it's not impossible to get both Franson and Raymond under contract (assuming Raymond is willing to sign for that much), it's just not exactly ideal.
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Very nice analysis, CTB.

One thing: why the focus on McLaren?  If I had my druthers, it would be Orr who is shuffled as McLaren brings a little bit more skill to that role.
 
Completely agreed, but I was trying to be realistic. The Leafs have come out and said they think Orr is a better player than McLaren, so it won't be him going down. It could also very likely be Colborne who gets the boot, but going with just 12 forwards and two of them being fighters is just plain dumb.
 
Nice thinking CTB.  They could definitely put themselves in a better spot if they exchanged Orr for a minimum wage player, saving $300K.

For home games, I would shuffle the 7th defenseman to the minors to save day-to-day cap space.

Note, with < $500K in cap space, you are unmanageable close to the cap.  When an injury happens where a player does not immediately go on the LTIR, you can't bring someone back up to replace them because the injured player stays on the cap.  So if a guy like Lupul sits out for 3 games with back spasms, you can't replace him in the lineup, forcing you to go with less than a full lineup.  This happened to NJ at the beginning of one season and Calgary after the deadline at one point.

One just can't really count on being so lucky that one never has any short term injuries, making that sliver of cap space just not enough.  I mean sure, one can hope that one can get through a few games to start the season while negotiating a trade or something, but it is almost inevitable it will bite you at some point.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
If they shaped the roster a little more towards what I want and signed Franson to that contract, replaced McLaren with Raymond (at say $925k) and replaced Fraser with Holzer (purely for cap reasons really) they would have $245,833 in cap space.
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You know, I actually meant to have Brennan (who I've been quite impressed with at camp) as the 7th guy not Holzer. That would give us $433,333 in cap space, about an extra $188k.
 
princedpw said:
Nice thinking CTB.  They could definitely put themselves in a better spot if they exchanged Orr for a minimum wage player, saving $300K.
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Definitely. If I was able to make my ideal team from this group of players I would sign Franson and Raymond to those contracts, send down McLaren and Orr and replace them with Colborne and Ashton on the 4th line, and send Fraser down in favour of Brennan. That would give us $518,333 in cap space, although that's now with $500,000 in potential bonuses that could be pushed to next seasons cap. If we were getting real stingy we could replace Ashton with Bodie and have $758,333 in cap space.

princedpw said:
Note, with < $500K in cap space, you are unmanageable close to the cap.  When an injury happens where a player does not immediately go on the LTIR, you can't bring someone back up to replace them because the injured player stays on the cap.  So if a guy like Lupul sits out for 3 games with back spasms, you can't replace him in the lineup, forcing you to go with less than a full lineup.  This happened to NJ at the beginning of one season and Calgary after the deadline at one point.

One just can't really count on being so lucky that one never has any short term injuries, making that sliver of cap space just not enough.  I mean sure, one can hope that one can get through a few games to start the season while negotiating a trade or something, but it is almost inevitable it will bite you at some point.
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Definitely. Going with a 21-man roster would be almost impossible over 82-games. Hopefully it would just be something that would buy Nonis some time to trade Liles away or something. Also, something that I believe teams like New Jersey and Calgary did in the past when they were short was use their 7th defenceman as a forward if injuries struck. That's why I think somebody like Brennan is perfect as a 7th defenceman here because his cap hit is close to the league minimum and he's the type of player who might be able to fill in at forward for 5 minutes a game if need be.
 
Leafaholic99 said:
I'd like to see the Leafs improve on D, get a nice stay at home dman, before upgrading the forwards any further, I am quite happy with our forwards right now.
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I am with you L99.

I really like the Leafs Top 10 forwards and I would love to see a rh top defenseman added as I look at the Leafs defense and I see a bit of redundancy.

Although I like Gunnarsson, Ranger is looking like he might be able to get up to the NHL tempo and Ranger is a bigger, stronger 'Gunnarsson' in my eyes.  I also like Gardiner but it appears that Reilly is a better option.  Liles is the odd duck.

I was thinking next year could be:

Ranger (Gunnarsson) / Phaneuf

Reilly / ??  (Who Gardiner, etc are traded for)

Fraser / Franson

(no offense to Yakupov)

..OK so I am still looking to see if the deep pockets of Toronto Maple Leafs can pry Shea Weber out of Nashville.  I have watched him play a bit and although he seems to be  better than Phaneuf but Weber does make gaffs as well. I have heard in a couple of places that Weber will never be able to live up to his cap hit of $7.857 MIL now in his prime let alone when he is 40 years old but to the Leafs it is only money which they have.

If the cap is going up to $74 MIL next year then I would propose:

CAPGEEK.COM USER GENERATED ROSTER
My Custom Lineup

FORWARDS
James Van Riemsdyk ($4.250m) / Tyler Bozak ($4.200m) / Phil Kessel ($8.000m)
Joffrey Lupul ($5.250m) / Nazem Kadri ($2.900m) / Nikolai Kulemin ($2.800m)
Mason Raymond ($2.500m) / Dave Bolland ($3.500m) / David Clarkson ($5.250m)
Frazer McLaren ($0.700m) / Jay McClement ($2.000m) / Colton Orr ($0.925m)
Jamie Devane ($0.660m) / Troy Bodie ($0.600m)

DEFENSEMEN
Morgan Rielly ($1.744m) / Shea Weber ($7.857m)
Paul Ranger ($2.800m) / Dion Phaneuf ($6.500m)
Mark Fraser ($1.275m) / Cody Franson ($4.500m)
T.J. Brennan ($0.660m) /

GOALTENDERS
Jonathan Bernier ($2.900m)
James Reimer ($2.600m)
------
CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)
(these totals are compiled with the bonus cushion)
SALARY CAP: $74,300,000; CAP PAYROLL: $74,371,310; BONUSES: $850,000
CAP SPACE (23-man roster): $778,690

I am curable with my fantasies though as I gave up on Dave Scatchard a few years ago and now that the Leafs have RH shooting Kessel, Lupul and Clarkson, I have relented on selling the farm to get Stewart from St Louis.
 
Based on last years NHL revenues it was estimated that a pro-rated cap would have risen to $75 MIL from the $64.3 MIL that was pre-determined during the lockout. 

Today's event of Rogers getting NHL rights just raised the cap from $64.3 MIL to $68 MIL singlehandedly for 2015/16.  If the revenues this season can sustain the momentum of last season (which I read they are) then the Cap upper limit might be $75 MIL this summer and $78.5 for 2015/16.
 
The shakeup I think I would do right now, based on two rumored deals.

Gleason for Liles  <-- brings a d-man we can use in for a d-man we are not using. Gleason can bring some badly needed physical play on defense as well as he should solidify a 2nd pairing with Franson, pushing Fraser or Ranger to the press box and can handle shut down duties as a secondary to Phaneuf. 

Gardiner for B. Schenn <-- the above trade makes this one a bit easier, but I think we are getting close to having to cut bait with Gardiner before his value starts to drop. Both players on last year of ELC, both have high ceilings but IMO Schenn is more likely to hit his. He brings more fearless physical play up front which I think we need right now, and Rielly to me is already quietly sneaking ahead of Gardiner on the depth chart. He's just a smarter player and a touch more conservative with his decisions, which is what this team needs now and into the future.

other: pick up Klesla on waivers or make a deal with Phx to dump some salary for him.  Not sure why Klesla is being moved out but he was at one point a pretty solid defensive d-man.  Has great size and what not.

Bottom line to me is I think the holes in this lineup are becoming very clear and if the deals out there are reasonable, Nonis should be pulling the trigger.  Would wake this team up a bit and also more importantly fill some leaks.
 
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