Player Discussion Carey Price - Who's Your Daddy? Edition

[Lafleurs Guy]

It's clearly MB's fault that Weber was injured.

It's his fault that Weber was only one of two legit blueliners in the lineup.

If anyone is spinning it's you.

No, sorry... it's you.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Price is a very great goalie, but is he ~25% better than any other goalie (because he is paid ~ 25% more than any other goalie)? No. And yes, it will hamper the cap in the future.

Let's examine the Leafs cap for a second: they overpaid Tavares, so they had to overpay Mathews, which led to overpaying Nylander, now there is Marner, Kapanen, and Johnsson. The domino's are falling, they will never be able to afford a deep team.

The reality is that established stars will make more than younger players. It's just the way the cap works.

As for it hurting us... I don't think so. We've had two straight years of us having 8+ mil in cap space - that's pretty close to Price's contract - and the cap is only going up. You pay your stars and you fill in the lineup with lower cost players, that's how it works. And we can't even get other star players here so the point's been moot.

The Leafs aren't overpaying Matthews or Tavares... they are legit stars and can win games/series for you and can be the difference between 100 point seasons and missing the playoffs. That's why they get paid.

As for Price, yeah he's pretty wicked. As has been pointed out many times in this thread, when he's got even a decent D in front of him he's Vezina caliber. But he's suffered with the D he's had in front of him. He's Vezina caliber from 14-17 and then his numbers tank from 18-19 until Weber returns and then it's Vezina numbers again. Not coincidence.

In any event, the club has to do better at fixing the D. The forwards are actually pretty decent (still need a star player) beyond where they were over the past couple of years so that's good. But we won't win anything with the AHL crap we've got back there right now.

We can definitely win a cup with Price as our best player. What we can't do though is win with Price alone. That will never work.