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Toronto Maple Leafs Organizational Depth Chart – Left Wing
by @TheDailyBites on 05/21/12 at 10:19 PM ET
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This is the fourth article in a series looking at the Toronto Maple Leafs organizational depth by position. Thus far I have completed my review of goalies, defensemen and center icemen in the organization and that leaves us with wingers to round things out. As I stated in my previous article, most forwards can play multiple positions and often do throughout a season, I will do my best to categorize players as centers, left wingers or right wingers. For example, I am including Nazem Kadri in the right winger evaluation. Although Kadri plays center with the AHL Toronto Marlies, he has almost been exclusively a right winger in his stints with the Maple Leafs which suggests that he will be a winger at the NHL level.
Left Wingers on 2011-12 roster:
Joffrey Lupul
Nikolai Kulemin
Mike Brown
Joey Crabb
Jay Rosehill
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Depth+Chart, Prospects,
Toronto Maple Leafs Organizational Depth Chart – Center
by @TheDailyBites on 05/13/12 at 06:49 PM ET
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This is the third article in a series looking at the Toronto Maple Leafs organizational depth by position. Thus far I have completed my review of goalies and defensemen and next up will be a look at the organizational depth at the center ice position. Since most forwards can play multiple positions and often do throughout a season, I will do my best to categorize players as center, right wing or left wing. For example, I am not including Nazem Kadri in the center evaluation. Although Kadri plays center with the AHL Toronto Marlies, he has almost been exclusively a winger in his stints with the Maple Leafs which suggests that he will be a winger at the NHL level.
Center’s on 2011-12 roster:
Tyler Bozak
Mikhail Grabovski
Tim Connolly
Matthew Lombardi
David Steckel
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Center, Prospects,
Can the Maple Leafs Draw Hope From the Ottawa Senators?
by @TheDailyBites on 05/09/12 at 08:38 PM ET
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The Ottawa Senators ended the 2010-11 season in 13th place in the Eastern Conference and 26th place overall in the NHL and looked to be on track for a painful rebuild. As they entered this past season they were picked by many analysts to be battling for the first overall pick, not the playoffs. Well Brian Murray, Eugene Melnyk and the rest of the Senators organization proved everyone wrong by making the playoffs and they were one win away from eliminating the first place NY Rangers in their first round playoff series.
Now that the Toronto Marlies are one win away from the Western Conference Finals in the Calder Cup playoffs, many people are beginning to draw comparisons between last season’s Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs. But is this a fair comparison?
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Prospects, Toronto+Marlies,
Toronto Maple Leafs Organizational Depth Chart – Defensemen
by @TheDailyBites on 05/07/12 at 09:12 PM ET
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I will be posting a series of articles looking at the Toronto Maple Leafs organizational depth by position. I started the series last week with goaltenders and I am continuing from the net out and going with defensemen next.
Defensemen on 2011-12 roster:
Dion Phaneuf
Carl Gunnarsson
John-Michael Liles
Mike Komisarek
Luke Schenn
Cody Franson (RFA)
Jake Gardiner
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Defensemen, Depth+Chart, Prospects, Toronto,
Toronto Maple Leafs Organizational Depth – Goalies
by @TheDailyBites on 05/02/12 at 09:32 PM ET
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I will be posting a series of articles looking at the Toronto Maple Leafs organizational depth by position. Brian Burke says that he likes to build his teams from the net out so that is where I will be starting.
Goalies on 2011-12 roster:
James Reimer
Jonas Gustavsson (UFA)
Goaltending was a major issue for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2011-12. The Maple Leafs signed James Reimer to a 3 year deal after a great stint with the big club in 2010-11 and Reimer looked to be the answer in goal for the Leafs. However, he struggled after suffering a concussion early in the season and never was able to get back on track. Gustavsson looked very good at times this past season but consistency continues to be his biggest issue. As he heads into unrestricted free agency we can be fairly certain that he won’t be back with the Maple Leafs for the 2012-13 season.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Goalies, Prospects,
Two Goaltenders the Toronto Maple Leafs Should Target This Off-Season
by @TheDailyBites on 04/29/12 at 08:42 PM ET
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There is no doubt that the goaltender is the single most influential player on any hockey team and rivals that of a quarterback in football for how much impact the position has on the game. Although having good goaltending does not guarantee success, not having it is a recipe for failure.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been a prime example of this over a seven year stretch in which they have not made the playoffs. Some will argue that the Maple Leafs just haven’t iced a good enough team to finish in the top eight in the Eastern Conference, which is a debatable point. What is not debatable is how inconsistent and below average their goaltending has been over that time period.
When James Reimer jumped into the Maple Leaf goal in the 2010-11 NHL season and posted an impressive 20-10-5 record with a 2.60 goals against average and a .921 save percentage it looked like the Maple Leafs finally had there answer in goal. Reimer looked so good in that he was rewarded with a 3 year deal at $1.8 million per season. Unfortunately Reimer suffered a concussion early in the season and never appeared to recover.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Goalies,
What Can Maple Leaf Fans Expect With the Fifth Overall Pick?
by @TheDailyBites on 04/26/12 at 08:51 AM ET
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With the conclusion of the NHL Draft lottery last week, reality has begun to set in for Toronto Maple Leaf fans as they were not able to move up to the first pick in the upcoming draft. I thought I would take some time to look back at past fifth overall picks to see what kind of player the Maple Leafs might expect to get with this draft position.
I reviewed the last 33 NHL drafts from 1979 - 2011 and there are some very recognizable names that have been drafted with the fifth pick including Scott Stevens, Jaromir Jagr and Phil Kessel. There are also some names that I have never heard of like Daniel Dore.
In performing my analysis it was important that I made things as statistically driven as possible. To do this I developed the following player rating criteria:
100 – Star player: top 3 forward, top pair defenseman or an elite starting goalie.
50 – Good player: top 6 forward, top 4 defenseman or a starting goalie over multiple seasons.
25 – Role Player: forward or defenseman with 200+ games or a goalie with 100+ starts.
10 – Depth Player: forward or defenseman with 51-199 games or a goal with 51-99 starts.
5 – Minor League Player: forward or defenseman with 1-50 games or a goalie with 50 or less starts.
0 – Bust: drafted player with zero NHL games.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: NHL+Entry+Draft,
The Phil Kessel Effect
by @TheDailyBites on 08/31/10 at 06:19 PM ET
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I heard a caller on the radio the other day talk about the effect the Phil Kessel trade has had on the Toronto Maple Leafs. Most people think that the trade was a disaster for the Leafs, but I was a proponent of the trade when it first happened. However, I did not think Brian Burke needed to give up 2 first round picks to get Kessel because he had the threat of the offer sheet and only needed to give up a first, second, and third round pick if he were to go that route (I know Burke lashed out at Kevin Lowe for the Dustin Penner offer sheet, but the biggest issue he had with Lowe was that he didn’t approach him first about a deal; he felt blind sided). That being said, I do not want to sit here and discuss how good or bad that deal was. Back to the caller, he made what I thought to be a great point, he essentially said that if Burke did not make the Kessel trade, some of the other deals he made later in the year probably would not have happened since the Leafs would have most likely been tanking the season and playing for Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin. So to judge Burke solely on the Kessel trade would not be fair. You need to look at the effect of that trade on the other moves he has made and I tend to agree with him. Thus, the Leafs most likely would not have made the Phaneuf or Giguere trades, which essentially brought the Leafs their young captain and also ridded them of bad contracts (Blake, and I would argue Stajan, and White as well).
Filed in: NHL Teams, Toronto Maple Leafs | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Burke, Kessel,
The NHL’s Best Fans…According to Forbes
by @TheDailyBites on 08/04/10 at 06:26 PM ET
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Forbes has recently put out a list of the best fans for the four major sports leagues in North America (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL). The list includes the top four teams from each of the leagues. The NHL is represented by the following teams:
3. Detroit Red Wings
6. Pittsburgh Penguins
11. Montreal Canadiens
16. Chicago Blackhawks
This excerpt from the Forbes article explains how the list was comprised:
Filed in: | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Attendance, Fans, Forbes, NHL,
Top 10 Remaining UFA’s
by @TheDailyBites on 07/28/10 at 06:32 PM ET
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After a flurry of activity in the first couple days of the free agent season, the market cooled off, leaving a lot of players sitting on the sidelines waiting for their phones to ring. There was a sense that everyone was waiting for Ilya Kovalchuk to sign and then the remaining pieces would start to fall into place. Well we are approaching August and although Kovalchuk is not officially signed, I would be surprised if he did not end up with the Devils shortly.
This past week a couple of the remaining UFA’s (Alexander Frolov and Alexei Ponikarovsky) were inked to one year deals. It appears as though there isn’t an appetite to sign these mid tier free agents to multi year deals. That does not bode well for the players on my list as they too will probably have to settle for a one year deal in hopes of cashing in next year.
I will preface my list by saying that probably the best available UFA, even at the tender age of 40, is Teemu Selanne. However, it is pretty clear the Selanne will either retire or sign on for another year in Anaheim.
Here are my top 10 remaining UFA’s:
Filed in: | KK Members Blog | Permalink
Tags: Asham, Free+Agency, Kariya, UFA,
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