Speculation: Leafs rushed the rebuild

People must think these agents are stupid or something.

I want to hear from their perspective: what would you rather do? negotiate with a notorious hard-ass like Lou or just simply wait it out and take your chances with an unproven rookie?

Kind of along the same nonsense about "surpressing player's production to keep contracts down". People honestly believe that stupidity.

 

TBH, I don't think Matthews really likes playing for Babcock. McDavid may end up wanting out of the gong show that is OEG (Oilers Entertainment Group), but I doubt he's coming home. Be thankful that the team overpaid for Tavares.

 

why do you think that?

 

Every team does this. Pittsburgh traded for Hossa. Chicago signed Campbell, then Hossa. LA traded for Richards & Carter. You know how often franchise centermen end up in free agency? ****ing never. Furthermore, the Tavares deal capped the Matthews deal, the AAVs are only different because one is divisible by 5.

 

Sure they benefit from each other but to say it is all Marriner is immature. If it is so easy being down low how come everyone doesn't do it? So Marriner drew two guys but who went to the open ice? Takes two guys to make a play.

 

Dubas isn’t the one doing most of the negotiating though.

Pridham is the guy, and was also the guy with Lou.

Lou signed Marleau to a $6.25M AAV. Either way you look at it, we weren’t going to be bulletproof.

Marner is still likely in the $9M ballpark, not $11M like most people think. But I guess it’s good that most people seem to think it will be $11M because that’s going to raise spirits when it is only $9M.

 

I don't think Boston beats Toronto, Toronto pushed Boston to the absolute limit last year without Tavares and without Muzzin, and sense then they have added Tavares and Muzzin without moving anything off the roster

Same with Washington I think the Leafs beat them, I think Tampa is the ONLY true roadblock

 

He has sure come into his own and looked much more comfortable. Seems fine with his limited minutes and has been starting to get more physical as time goes by.

It would indeed be foolish to expend assets on a 4c that we end up paying 1.2 mill more then Goat.

That savings and even more from trading Brown gives us the extra money for Kapp or AJ.

 

Hopefully someone else can get Boston in the first round and wipe them out for us. The WC upsets over Tampa too

 

Just a quick bump to see if anyone’s opinion changed

 

Nope.

 

Should never have traded two 2nd rounders for Boyle & Plek. Should never have signed Marleau. Should have at minimum traded JVR, Bozak & Leo last year. Imagine the position this team would be in with all those extra picks, prospects and cap space.

 

The Marleau signing was fine, the third year on that contract was not. Still say the right move was done with Bozak & JVR. You don't trade them when we were going on a playoff run. Komarov and Martin should have been traded.

 

because by then the NHL will have decided it's time to get Arizona on the right track in order to enure their survival, so they'll put Matthews in there, the same way they put Crosby in Pittsburgh to prevent the franchise from going under... the same way they put Gretzky in L.A. to prevent the franchise from going under...

 

Hindsight is undefeated.

 

The Marleau signing was not fine, its jamming the leafs up next year there is no denying that fact. The leafs were locked into a playoff position and were never going to win the cup. Not trading JVR & Bozak was moronic. Keeping them for a playoff run is something emotional fans and players would say. If the leafs had a cold blooded pragmatic manager that is immune from fan and media criticism, the smart thing would have been trading them.

 

Yes, trade off key veterans on a playoff team that finished with the 6th best record in the league, that definitely would go well in the locker room.

Do people think this is NHL19 or realize that it's real life and things aren't so black and white like that?

 

The funny thing about that is there was a lot of fans that were saying the same things as each event unfolded. This is not revisionist history here.

 

I don't know why Lou signed Marleau when he knew we were going to be signing Tavares one year later...right?

 

Lol throwing the NHL19 jab at me is a red herring, it doesn't even make sense. I wasn't throwing absurd trade proposals around. Selling off a bunch of assets for futures and not signing players is a pretty easy thing to do. Again, letting some players short term emotions deter you from making their team better in the future is a pretty piss poor excuse if you ask me. Fans on these boards were right back when they originally said them and they are still right now.

 

It's too bad that the Leafs didn't rebuild and draft like this before the salary cap, they may have won a a few cups already.

 

Leafs did not rush the rebuild. We're a very good team a season or two away from becoming a great team. We've still got a healthy group of prospects who should make a positive impact soon enough.

If anything, our rebuild got accelerated due to the quality of players we were able to draft and develop in a short period of time.

 

The rebuild wasn’t rushed, the Tavares signing just threw off the numbers, and a couple of Lou’s signings are making things difficult for this coming season anyway.

 

I absolutely loved the Tavares signing at the time, and he sure had one hell of a season.

But I sort of agree with OP to a degree.

It created a cap nightmare that possibly wasn't worth it.

I understood overpaying for a ufa. Ufa's have always played the market and got massive paydays. But then Dubas started paying our rfa's like they're ufa's.

Let's face it... when Tavares was signed, leafs fans thought Nylander would sign for under 6 mil, Marner at around 8 mil, and Matthews between 10-11, but over 8 years (and that was based on the assumption that he would have like a 50 goal/90 point season this year). I checked the old threads. This was pretty much the high end consensus.

Had we known on July 1st that Matthews and Marner would somehow negotiate around 30 mil between them, would we have still wanted Tavares at 11 mil? I'm not so sure...