The Puck Drops on LeafsWire!

Hello PuckDrop readers, Mark and Luca here from LeafsWire. We’re both hardcore Leaf fans who grew up in the Toronto area, and we’ve witnessed the ups and downs that the Leafs have gone through the past two decades.

At first,we were just fans who would watch the games, but we slowly progressed into outspoken fanatics with a passion for writing about the Leafs. We both love the game of hockey, and have developed a keen hockey sense, and apply this general hockey logic towards the Leafs. At times, we’re very opinionated and you may not share the same ideas as us, but we don’t just make claims without supporting them, and you will know where were coming from. We’re both very open to comments and criticism, so don’t be afraid to leave us a comment, email, tweet, whatever, with your opinion/question. So without further ado, lets get started.

The 2009-2010 Maple Leaf season has been one to forget. Expected to be better than last year, the Leafs have failed to meet the claims, and find themselves in the basement of the the Eastern Conference. They’re on the verge of missing the playoffs for a fifth consecutive year, and Leafs Nation is visibly in distress. Brian Burke was brought in to assemble a team that was capable of winning and competing for the Cup. This year is pivotal for the Leafs, because it sees 17 players become UFA/RFA and a ton of cap space gained by the team. This means that Burke must adequately determine the value of his players, and decide whether or not they should be retained moving forward. The players that Burke feels do not fit in to the team’s blueprint of the future will surely be traded at this year’s upcoming trade deadline. We have sorted the Leafs current roster into categories of: untouchables, borderline untouchables, tradeable commodities, and un-tradeable commodities. This leads us to the topic of this series, players who potentially could be traded, where they could be traded, for what, and the likeliness of it occurring. The segment will be entitled Garbage Day (for obvious reasons) and will be released every Friday leading up to the trade deadline right here on Puckdrop.ca.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, this isn’t a Ferrari dealership. Rather, it’s a mix between a used car lot and a bankrupt GM dealership. We have certain players that are actually skilled, and teams could insert into their lineup right away, and then we have some players that teams may be interested in acquiring as extra pieces on their journey to Lord Stanley.

There are certain players who are considered untouchable moving forward, but anything can happen:

* All figures are salary cap hits.

Considered untouchables include:

Kessel @ 5.4M/year for 4 more years after this.

Bozak @ 3.725M/year for 1 more year after this.

Kulemin who is an RFA after this year (current cap hit 1.4875M/year)

Stalberg @ 850K/year for 1 more year after this.

Schenn @ 2.975M/year for 1 more year after this.

Kadri @ 1.75M/year for 3 years. (Unless he plays 11 pro games, it will slide a year forward)

Orr @ 1.0M/year for 3 more years after this.

Borderline untouchables include:

Grabovski @ 2.9M/year for 2 more years after this.

J. Mitchell who is an RFA after this year (current cap hit 487K/year)

Beauchemin @ 3.8M/year for 2 more years after this.

Gunnarsson @ 800k/year for 1 more year after this.

Komisarek @ 4.5M/year for 4 more years after this.

White who is an RFA after this year (current cap hit 850k/year)

Gustavsson who is an RFA after this year (current cap hit 2.5M/year)

Tradeable Commodities:

Hagman, UFA 2012-2013 (current cap hit 3.0M/year)

Stempniak, UFA 2010-2011

Ponikarovsky, UFA 2010-2011

Stajan, UFA 2010-2011

Primeau, UFA 2010-2011

Mayers, UFA 2010-2011

Kaberle, UFA 2011-2012 (current cap hit 4.25M/year)

Exelby, UFA 2010-2011

Untradeable commodities:

Blake @ 4.0M/year cap hit for 2 more years after this.

Wallin who is a UFA after this year. (current cap hit 800k/year)

Rosehill @512.5k/year cap hit for 1 more years after this.

Finger @ 3.5M/year cap hit for 2 more years after this.

Van Ryn who is a UFA after this year. (current cap hit 2.9M/year)

Toskala who is a UFA after this year. (current cap hit 4.0M/year)

Now, for all you skeptics out there let me explain my reasoning. The untouchables should be fairly self-explanatory, save for Orr; Burke signed him to be an enforcer, and he should do that for the rest of his contract. Borderline untouchables are all players that were recently signed by Burke, and/or play positions that the Leafs are rather thin at currently. Gunnarsson and White represent possible replacements for Kaberle if and when he is traded.

Gustavsson deserves a paragraph to himself, because there’s two ways you can approach this: the path where Gustavsson is retained and works towards becoming our number one goaltender, or the crazy idea that he get’s stolen via offersheet and we get a high draft pick in return. Jonas Siegal had an article here with his, for the most part shared, opinion on Gustavsson’s future. The last paragraphs give clues that Burke may be willing to let the Monster go to receive some offersheet picks, and to replace him go out and sign Hiller. It’s a crazy, radical, conspiratist theory but it could make sense logically if Jonas isn’t the answer. If that fails, they could always resign Gustavsson for next year as he would be an upgrade over Toskala.

Skipping the trade candidates for now, we look at the untradeable players currently employed by the Leafs. Again, most are self explanitory, but there are three main reasons why each finds himself on the list: his play, his contract, his age, his ambiguity. These players either cannot play well enough to be traded, have ridiculously unmovable contracts, are too old to be effective, or they’re too common for a team to need them. Their contracts will most likely expire while with the Leafs.

This concludes the introduction part of our six week Garbage Day series. Check back next week for updates to the categories (if anything should occur) and our analysis on the first two tradeable players: Niklas Hagman and Lee Stempniak.

We look forward to your comments!

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