Ocean’s Eleven has a great line that could be applied to this year’s offseason: “You lose focus for just one minute in this game and someone gets hurt.” Ok, I lost focus for a few minutes seasons with the Maple Leafs—but good God! What the hell happened? I turned my back for a few seconds, now they have one of the best defensive corps in the entire NHL! We’ve seen Brian Burke do this before, but damn—that was quick.
Yeah... this is good.
Within the last week, Burkie has been able to sign Mike Komisarek and Francois Beauchemin, trade for Garnet Exelby and shed Pavel Kubina’s contract! If this is how he’s going to act when he doesn’t get the player he wants in the draft, then Leafs Nation should hope for a string of unfortunate drafts. Apparently, a pissed Burkie makes for a productive Burkie.
With yesterday’s addition of unrestricted free agent Francois Beauchemin, the Leafs have 3 defense pairings that will be able to play in any situation. That’s 2 more than they were able to claim last season (Schenn and anyone) and 3 more than the Islanders had last season. That’s right; I just compared the Maple Leafs defense to the Islanders.
Here’s a look at their potential defense next season:
|
Name |
Years Remaining |
Money Owed |
Cap Hit |
|
Francois Beauchemin |
3 |
$11.4 mil |
$3.8 mil |
|
Garnet Exelby |
1 |
$1.725 mil |
$1.392 mil |
|
Jeff Finger |
3 |
$10.5 mil |
$3.5 mil |
|
Tomas Kaberle |
2 |
$8.5 mil |
$4.25 mil |
|
Mike Komisarek |
4 |
$18 mil |
$4.5 mil |
|
Luke Schenn |
2 |
$5.95 mil |
$2.975 mil |
Add in Francois Allaire to go with the Vesa Toskala-Jonas Gustavsson-Justin Pogge trifecta, and you have to think that ONE of them will be able to stop the puck with regularity. Toskala has one more year (at $4 million) before he becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of next season. The Leafs have to decide what they want to do with restricted free agent Justin Pogge. Oh, and you read that right—the Leafs won the Jonas Gustavsson sweepstakes for the low, low price of $810,000 for a one year deal (plus a signing bonus to make it an even $900,000). Maybe he’ll be more like Niklas Backstrom and less like Andrew Raycroft.
We’ve seen Brian Burke use this formula before. If you look back to his last few years in Anaheim, they built from the blueline out. The defense was made up of high priced, talented vets, from #1 all the way through #6. Goaltending was taken care of by the best goaltending coach in the business. Up front, he depended on young players with skill to carry the load offensively. That’s how he made the whole salary cap thing work in Anaheim—the talented, young, inexpensive kids were expected to score. They didn’t hope for goals, they expected goals.
I think that Leafs fans would have been happy if this was there ONLY defensive acquisition!
Before Leafs Nation or the guys (and girls) over at Pension Plan Puppets get TOO excited, remember that the forwards currently on the roster look like they belong in Long Island (yes, I just compared the Leafs to the Islanders, again). After all, Jason Blake is the highest paid forward. I don’t have to tell you where he came from! Their most productive forward from last season was Jason Blake with 25 goals (tied for 60th in the NHL) and 63 points—which was good enough for 53rd best in the NHL. Even the biggest Leafs homer has to admit that they lack a truly elite forward, right?
Burke may be acquiring all of these defensemen in order to trade for a talented forward. Although I don’t necessarily agree, some Leaf fans think that Kaberle is more valuable as a trade asset than he is on the ice. Would Kaberle be enough to fetch a 30 goal scorer? Remember, he was all but traded to Boston for Phil Kessel at the Draft a couple of weeks ago. Then again, that proposed fleecing trade included the 7th overall pick as well. At this point, I have no clue what Kaberle’s trade value would be. I do know that he could quarterback the Leafs power play better than anyone else on their roster though.
There’s even debate as to who the 6th defenseman on the team will be next year. If the current roster is the lineup Toronto opens the season with, who are the odd men left out? Conventional wisdom says that Jeff Finger will get the benefit of the doubt because of his bloated salary. There are 10.5 million reasons left on his contract that says he’s NOT playing in the AHL next season. Ian White and his 5’10 frame might should move up to forward. Mike Van Ryn is a good player, but he’s played a grand total of 47 games over the last 2 seasons. I’m not sure that’s the kind of guy that you want to depend on.
Then there’s the wildcard of the bunch: Anton Stralman. The 22 year old could be the best of the rest on the Maple Leafs blueline, but he’s young. Really young. If you look back at Brian Burke’s career (specifically in Anaheim), he heavily leans on veteran defensemen. Even if Stralman has the potential to be the best of the bunch, he has a few factors working against him.
I’m the kind of guy that thinks that you can never have enough defenseman. Shit happens throughout a year. Guys get hurt. Guys wake up with a horrible case of The Suck and no longer look like NHLers. Guys get hammered in the media because their team was stupid enough to sign him to an expensive, long term deal that they didn’t deserve (Hello Jeff Finger).
But you can’t argue with what Burke is doing in the mighty TO right now. The defense looks like it could be scary good for the next couple years. If defense wins championships, then the Leafs are on the right track. And if Toskala can’t stop pucks behind that defense, then maybe Gustavsson can. If the newly acquired Swede can’t do the job; then for the love of God, find someone that can! It really shouldn’t be that hard!
If they can get some goaltending, 2 goals per game might be enough! To hell with forwards…
