The pickings are pretty slim when the NHL free agents hit the street at the stroke of midnight on July 1. Teams have been locking up potential free agents for the last couple of seasons because under the current collective agreement each team can only carry a limited number of big contracts so you need to ensure that you have the right ones lucked up. One of the miscalculations by ex-Leaf GM John Ferguson was that he would be able to pick up a successor to Mats Sundin that he anticipated around this time. Well they aren’t going to be out there.
The unrestricted free agents (UFAs) are largely older players that Cliff Fletcher had indicated would not be of interest to the Leafs. In addition to Mats Sundin (37) that list includes some other goodies but oldies such as Teemu Selanne (37), Jaromir Jagr (36), Brian Rolston (35), Brendan Shannahan (39), Pavol Demitra (33). There are still some younger ones that will hit the market but the competition will be fierce: Marion Hossa (29), Sean Avery (28), Brian Campbell (29), Ryan Malone (28), Brad Stuart (28), Michael Ryder (28) and Wade Redden (31).
The focus may very well be on restricted free agents (RFAs). As teams look to get younger, they are looking at other teams RFAs despite the fact that they must compensate the other team with draft picks. During the past 2 seasons big contract offers were made to Ryan Kessler, Tomas Vanek and Dustin Penner. Vancouver and Buffalo matched the offers so only Penner switched teams. The message was clear to GMs – lock up both RFAs and UFAs. So during the regular season scrambled to lock up potential Anaheim locked up potential RFAs like Anaheim’s Ryan Getzlaf and Philadelphia’s Mike Richards. Then at the trading draft the Flyers traded R.J. Umberger because they knew they didn’t have enough cap space to re-sign him.
All eyes will be on players like Jay Bouwmeester, Jeff Carter, Pierre-Marc Bouchard Pascal Leclaire, Mike Green and Corey Perry as the prime RFAs. I expect most will be signed before July 1. However, if they aren’t there will be some aggressive GMs who will attempt try to sign some of these players and hope that their existing teams can’t match their offers because of limited cap space. Anyone of these players would look just great in a Maple Leaf sweater and with $41 million in salaries committed next season, they could accommodate one of these RFAs. Though Fletcher has not signalled that this was one of the routes he would take to change the character of the team. The costs will be extrodinarily high.
