showtime8
Registered User
Too each their own. IMO, the signing of the Nylander, Matthews, Marner may have the largest impact of any off season activity.
They will have an impact on the cap, but I think we all know what sort of cap hit they are going to be at give or take 500k-1mill. All of those plans are built into the future and not really within this off-season per se. Nylander is likely to get the 6mill that Ehlers got. And if you know that Matthews is going to get a touch more than Eichel & Marner will get around Pastrnak, then plan for those numbers and build accordingly.
The thing the Leafs haven't done this off-season is build their defense. They re-signed Carrick & Marincin & brought in Ozhiganov. To me, that's not enough to justify giving them a high grade. We learned a lot about the defense at the end of last year. Hainsey ran out of gas when the calendar turned to 2018. Don't know if it was injury, too much pk time or age? Gardiner is what he is at this point in his career, but the Leafs have chosen to live with it either way. And they're banking on Zaitsev making a return to form the way he was in the first season with the Leafs. Still too many questions marks up until this point in the off-season. I hope it does change before game 1.