The Messenger said:Sure team building is the biggest factor in all 30 teams not just Leafs or bigger martets ..
The biggest advantage is the Leafs who have been built around 34-38 year old player can now be built around 27-28 year old franchise players in the future .. The old CBA never allowed them to do that with out paying a kings ransom in prospects and picks if some team was willing to trade them one ..
I agree the budget comes down but so did player prices .. Leafs no longer need to pay a Reichel 3+ mil and now can pay a much better player equal or less under the new CBA and player prices. Perhaps a Paul Kariya comes now with a 3 mil price tag.??
Leafs biggest weakness of old CBA was that an older injury prone team was the best choice they had for a Cup run .. Now they can build a team without having to have very many players over 34+ to do it .. No need to ever go into a full rebuild in the process as players just hitting their primes can be had for free ..
Leafs have Mats under contract for 3 more years .. and near the player max 20% at 6.8 mil price .. So when his contract is over Rick Nash, Dany Heatley and Ilya Kovalchuk hit the market ..So leafs have to have CAP space availabe to offer the max because Mats comes off the books ..
Its the TB's and Ottawa's that going to have the biggest problem keeping cores together. Teams that do not have young cores or lots of young top prospects that require $$ to keep, can freely buy to build teams ..
Two major league problems with your reply:
First, the Leafs were never forced to pay Reichel $3 million. They chose to pay guys like him ridiculous money, and therefore set the bar for everyone else. Please do not try to pass the Leafs off as a victim of the last CBA.
Related to that point, the Leafs never had to build a team of over-the-hill free agents. They could have, you know... drafted and traded for younger, better players. Strange concept in Toronto I know, but it has worked elsewhere.
The second problem is that you are simply assuming many of these players will simply want to come to Toronto. The market for top end talent is no longer six teams. Toronto will have a lot more competition now for those free agents, and they wont be able to even go after all of them. Sure Nash, Heatley and Kovalchuk might hit the market, but there is no guarantee that they will choose to leave their current teams, nor is there any guarantee that any of them will choose to go to Toronto.
Regardless, because of the cap, Toronto can really only go after one of those guys. That is exactly the point. The Leafs, and other large market teams, cannot load up on free agent talent anymore, which will spread the talent pool around, and down to the smaller market teams.