JFJ spent much of June resigning last year's roster with the exception of Jeff O'Neill, Yanic Perreault, Mike Peca and J.S. Aubin. They have now been replaced with Mark Bell, Jason Blake and Vesa Toskala. I expect JFJ is done although he should try to move one of his many over-priced defensemen to a team that missed out on landing a big free agent and cap space. The Islanders with $20 million in cap space comes to mind.
With limited cap space the Leafs were out of the running for the top free agents and had to look at the 2nd tier. I think they did well in signing Blake who is not that expensive and is a consistent 20+ goal scorer in the NHL. He also come with speed and grit. In fact, he and Selanne are the only free agents that scored 40 goals or more last season and Selanne is likely to announce his retirement. In fact, Briere, Drury, Smyth and Gomez have never scored 40 goals in the NHL. Gomez has scored over 20 goals once in his entire NHL career. So its not how much you spend on free agents but how well you spend it (eg, the Leafs' defense).
Adding Toskala alone should be sufficient to push the Leafs into the playoffs. On most nights last year the Leafs could compete with most NHL teams but for their goaltending. Mark Bell is a big risk considering what they gave up in draft picks. He had a terrible year last season on and off the ice. Past reclamation projects have not worked out for JFJ (Lindros, O'Neill, Allison, Peca) but have been costly. Low risk ones such as Battaglia make more sense.
But the Leafs still have many weaknesses. They have too many rushing defenseman but not enough that are strong in their own end. Their penalty killing is weak and Peca is likely not coming back. Too many key players over 30 and not very many youngsters. There is still no heir to Sundin as the #1 centre. So I don't see them as contenders until there is a considerable improvement in goals against and penalty killing.
But the good news is their divisional opponents have not gotten stronger. Buffalo had to sign one of either Briere or Drury and did not. Montreal lost Rivet and Souray on defense and only able to land Hamrlik. Ottawa is in good shape unless they can't hang onto Emery. Boston also has goaltending help now but has many holes in their line up.
So if only someone other than Sundin scores in shootout that would be great.
12 years ago
