Leafs Nation Report (Toronto) - The Toronto Maple Leafs saw quite an interesting off-season which had many Leafs faithful glued to their television sets throughout the long summer. Coming off from a relatively successful season in which they made the plaoffs, young general manager Jason Yu turned many heads. He decided not to opt for an extension towards head coach Pat Quinn, the team’s first head coach. Instead, he signed Tom Renney to a long term deal (terms were not disclosed). As with many of Yu’s controversial moves, many were quick to criticize. Critics questioned the timing of the signing especially when only a few days later, Brent Sutter announced his availability to the OTHL.
“We were aware of Brent’s position before we made this signing,” said Yu. “Brent is a very good coaching prospect with no nonsense approach that would fit our style and philosophy to a ‘T’. However, in the end, our management felt that Tom had many new exciting ideas to the team and we felt that it was in our team’s best interest that Renney was the best candidate. We have a relatively young team and Renney has a great reputation for developing and getting the most of young players.”
2007 Off-Season Recap
Transactions:
Toronto: 4th CHI 2007 (Nichlas Torp)
Chicago: 5th TOR ’07 (Mattias Modig 141st overall) & 6th TOR ’07 (Andreas Thuresson 171st overall)
Toronto: Darcy Tucker
Los Angeles: Dan Bertram & Michael Forney
Toronto: Marc Staal & 4th NSH 2008
Anaheim: Steve Bernier & Loui Eriksson
Acquisitions: Philippe Boucher, Gary Roberts, Darcy Tucker
Additions: Nathan Paetsch, Pekka Rinne, Andy Wozniewski
Deletions: Eric Lindros, Ed Belfour, Oleg Kvasha, Steve Bernier, Jason Doig, Karel Pilar, Jiri Fischer, Alexander Khavanov, Fred Brathwaite
With a new coach under the helm, the Blue and White set their sights on the upcoming unrestricted free agency. They had many advantages going into the off-season having signed all their key restricted free agents including rising star Marc-Andre Fleury and upcoming local native Stephen Weiss. In addition, with the league’s new raised salary cap at $50.3 million, the team had more than $25 million to spend in a talented pool that included Jarome Iginla, Jaromir Jagr, and Zdeno Chara. In the end, they were able to sign journeyman and former Leaf Gary Roberts as well as veteran Philippe Boucher.
Management was delighted to have attracted high profile free agents as Roberts and Boucher. Many general managers around the league too were impressed with signings by Yu stating of “good bargain deals”, with Boucher signing for 4 years at $4.5 million and Roberts to a $2.5 million deal for the next two seasons. Both players will be counted upon to provide leadership to gel with the relatively young team providing a solid mixture of youth and experience.
However, in a hockey crazed town, many were still displeased with the way off-season ended. Yet again, the Yu brass failed to attract a marquee top-end talent to the city. Much like last off-season in which Chris Pronger opted to go with Buffalo over Toronto, Toronto missed out on the likes of Iginla, Jagr, and Chara this season.
“We tried very hard this off-season and thought we were very aggressive,”commented Yu,”we made a very compelling case to Iginla and thought we had a good chance to sign him. However, he chose to sign in Chicago instead. There’s nothing we can do about it. We have a solid team this year, better than last year in my opinion and we think we can make a stab at going far into the playoffs.”
Leafs Nation have every reason to be disappointed, especially with the fact that Toronto after the free agency period are still under the minimum league floor of $34.3 million with close to $20 million of cap space. Yu defended the organizations stating that “we have many upcoming important restricted free agents to re-sign including [Andrej] Meszaros, [Brad] Boyes, [Raffi] Torres, [Bryan] Allen, and of course our captain [Jarret] Stoll.”
“We have to re-sign these players, and if we have enough money then we might be able to get that coveted franchise player we’ve been missing. Every team has that player, but we need to make sure that we still have our core around first before we can move on.”
Aside from the disappointment, there were many positives throughout the off-season. The Leafs were able to select high offensively talented Alexei Cherepanov in this year’s draft. Despite losing budding power forward Steve Bernier and offensive minded Loui Eriksson, they did get Ontario native Marc Staal, a potential top pairing defenceman. In addition, they were able to use one of their assets: a strong prospect depth which they developed over the years. And for that they acquired Darcy Tucker from the Los Angeles Kings who at this stage will hopefully be more productive than sophomore Steve Bernier.
The prospect pool still remains deep in Toronto with the likes of Derik Brassard, Michael Frolik, Jakub Kindl, Ty Wishart, Michael Sauer, Karri Ramo, and Kyle Chipchura. More importantly, this year’s rendition of the Maple Leafs look vastly improved heading into the season compared to last season. With a bright future ahead, look for the Blue and White to improve on last year’s results and attempt to not only make the playoffs but make a serious run at Lord Stanley’s mug.
Grade B+