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Bozak's Future

The chemistry between Bozak and Kessel really benefits Bozak only.  Any comparable centre would have similar results.  that said, we're not talking as if the drop is the same as it was between Sundin & Hoglund... the latter had a complete free pass for years on Mats' wing. 

I would much prefer Weiss, but the problem will be can you sign him, and then can you pay Weiss, Kadri and Grabbo?  What's to assume you can trade Grabbo if that is the right decision?

 
Corn Flake said:
The chemistry between Bozak and Kessel really benefits Bozak only.
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And we're really stretching the definition of "chemistry" in a hockey sense here.  There really isn't any, Kessel is just good enough offensively to find his goals and points.  I really think JVR and Kessel have more chemistry in a "finding one another" on the ice sort of way.
 
Potvin29 said:
Corn Flake said:
The chemistry between Bozak and Kessel really benefits Bozak only.
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And we're really stretching the definition of "chemistry" in a hockey sense here.  There really isn't any, Kessel is just good enough offensively to find his goals and points.  I really think JVR and Kessel have more chemistry in a "finding one another" on the ice sort of way.
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The same as how Kessel and Lupul used to link up.

Maybe Kessel is just a really good player.
 
I think I would have Kadri centre the first line along with Lupul.  We know Lupul and Kessel have great chemistry from last year and Lupul and Kadri have shown it this year.  That would be an unstoppable trio.  Grab goes back to being our 2nd line centre which he has shown he can do very well and JVR takes a wing position on that line.  I go out and find a winger with some size for that 2nd line on the UFA market or via trade which should be easier to nail down and I forget about looking for that centre.  Joe Colborne who is not waiver exempt next season becomes our third line centre and is eased into the league much like Kadri was.  He slots in between Kulemin and Frattin.  Mac and Bozak both walk.  Komarov, McClement and McLaren provide us with our 4th line if we pick up that winger via the UFA market.

If we lose Frattin/Colborne and one of our Dmen via a trade for that big top 6 winger.  I wouldn't be opposed to having a shut down checking line of Komarov, McClement and Kulemin as our third line in a top 6, bottom 6 scenario as our top 6 would be much more potent.  We then fill out our 4th line with in house and UFA options.
 
mirtle: Nonis: "It?s not a situation where we have to sign Tyler Bozak because there are numbers that make sense for the team."

Read: Tyler, you're not getting $5M per from us.
 
Peter D. said:
Considering trading/signing a #1 centre is damn near impossible, I'm resigned and accepting to the fact we may just have to go with two really good centres we'd typically classify as #2's.  If Bozak does indeed fetch $4.5 to $5M out there, I'd rather let him walk and spend some extra money to go out and grab a guy like Stephen Weiss for $5.5M.
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I think Bozak is going to be re-signed and the comments earlier today were just posturing for negotiations. We seem to be ignoring comments from Nonis at trade deadline which were highly positive in favour of keeping Bozak.

After all, would the Leafs have lost Game 7 with a healthy Bozak in the line up? Nothing is for sure, but I think the answer leans to "probably not".

This is just posturing as the Leafs ante up for the next round of cards.

There really isn't a lot available in the market. Nonis would far rather have the devil he knows -- who is quite serviceable and the best friend and roommate of his franchise player. Being 27/28 sure as hell doesn't hurt, either.

If Bozak wants $5.5, he's not going to get that from TML. In past years, he might well get it from other teams, but I'm not sure he will this year given the cap effect. If he will take $4.5, he certainly will get re-signed with Toronto. Frankly, $5 million is probably doable as well.

This may come down to length of contract as much as it will salary level. The Leafs will want five years at $4.5, Bozak will want three as Bozak will hope the market price will have rebounded by then and he will only be 30/31 when he next comes up. If the Leafs have to trade him at age 29/30 with a year left on his contract, it will be doable, too. Probably a win-win.

If they try and push Bozak to the salary wall and potentially off the team without a replacement free agent signing/trade in their pocket already (which, critically, they won't have the chance to make before they tell Bozak to go fish in other waters), not only will they will piss off Kessel and much of the rest of the team, they will make themselves vulnerable to a Kadri hold-out. That's a losing proposition -- on the ice and on the accounting ledger, too. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul at that point, with an adverse impact on the team's locker room to boot. It doesn't make any commercial sense.

The reality is that the cap decreases by 10% this year. That is going to have a real net downward effect on player salaries. It will not be until the new cap floor is calculated due to revenue streams next year from a full season that we'll be able to see where we are going forward.

But that's then and this is now. Sadly for Bozak,  it's just a *really* bad year to be a UFA when factoring in the new cap effect.

Given Bozak's age, he has a lot of gas left in the tank and the Leafs know what they are getting. Given the weakness in the team at centre and poor face-off performance, it's not rational to let him go.

I don't think it is likely we see much in the high-end UFA signings. We might grab Wellwood at a medium price, but the high-end is unlikely. The real problem this year is that player  salary expectations based on previous salary levels have not yet adjusted to the reality of the new salary cap.  That lesson is about to be learned this summer and players are going to be made to drink a bitter cup.

From interviews so far, one of the most consistent themes is that given the Leafs' modest cap commitments, the Leafs hope to make  one or two advantageous trades that will force the teams near or over the salary cap to dump players or face a compliance buyout.  Even teams with flush budgets are going to feel very uncomfortable without the  flexibility that being AT LEAST 10 and probably 15% below cap provides. Injuries are certain to occur over the season and deadline trades need elbow room. 

Whether the Leafs' hopes prove to be realistic or not remains to be seen, but clearly, the Leafs are planning to take advantage.  God knows, it's about time that a change in the salary cap -- a system which is, after all, aimed at preventing MLSE from actually being able to use their immense cash advantage -- actually benefits Toronto in the short term.

It is going to be the most interesting few days after the Cup is awarded that we have ever seen in an off-season. With the draft, it is likely to be close to the equivalent of trade deadline day.

I'm really looking forward to it.
 
If he wants 5 mil Id let him walk.. His numbers and play arent there. Cant get sucked into because there are no other centers available lets overpay
 
I don't think that there is a team out there that would pay Bozak $5 mil/yr with the salary cap going down. I think this situation reaches July 1st and he signs for $4.5 with TML, which I feel is very generous for TML.
 
the thing is if they sign bozak there won't be any upgrades at centre.  Essentially you have locked up 2 subpar centers to overpriced contracts.  I say let bozak walk.  We can go with Kadri and Grabbo until a good centre becomes available.
 
Rebel_1812 said:
the thing is if they sign bozak there won't be any upgrades at centre.  Essentially you have locked up 2 subpar centers to overpriced contracts.  I say let bozak walk.  We can go with Kadri and Grabbo until a good centre becomes available.
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Not that I think we have to sign Bozak, but the problem with going with Kadri and Grabbo is it means the Leafs are paper thin at centre, already the weakest up front position we have, yet the most critical. If one of those two got injured it would be bad news.  On top of that, we don't know if Grabbo is going to have a bounce back year next year or if he has just regressed into what we saw this year.  Would be a huge risk to assume he's going to put up 65 points again.
 
Rebel_1812 said:
the thing is if they sign bozak there won't be any upgrades at centre.  Essentially you have locked up 2 subpar centers to overpriced contracts.  I say let bozak walk.  We can go with Kadri and Grabbo until a good centre becomes available.
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If the Leafs do that, they won't actually save any money. The options then are to:

1 - Sign an UFA centre - instead of the one they let escape. This  will be in the context of "now we have to get this done, we got to pay 'em" so this ends up being a Mike Ribeiro / Derek Roy sweepstakes and you overpay there; or
2 - You make a trade for a centre to assist a team fire sale salary dump. The Leafs are really looking to take advantage of the Flyers on this -- but so is everybody else. This is a reasonable hope but a bad bet if you put yourself in a position where you have to do it.  Then the price goes up in prospects.

Worse, if you do not re-sign Bozak, then as surely as the sun rises and sets, the Leafs will have Kadri sit out as part of his RFA negotiation because his agent will have the Leafs absolutely over a barrel. Any $ you saved on Bozak you now spend on Kadri after an acrimonious dispute and probably starting the season without Kadri on the ice. So instead of three prime-time centres and starting the season with a view to jumping out of the gate to amass some early wins towards qualifying for the playoffs, you have only 1 prime timer to start the season and you can end up behind the eight ball and 4 games below .500 before October is done. Why? Because you will now have Grabovski, Colbourne, McClement  and a CCM hockey Bag full of pucks with some skates duct taped to the bottom as your 4th line centre.

This is not a plan for success.

In contrast, sign Bozak at $4.5 and Kadri will fall in line quickly because now you really can afford to wait him out. So there will be no hold out and you can get on with the business of trying to make a trade for a centre without having to actually make one so you don't get fleeced.

 
Steel_Wind said:
This is not a plan for success.
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Well, not if the idea is that the world is ending next year and that the Leafs have to go for it before the sun burns out, no. If, however, we accept the possibility of a 2014-2015 season and beyond than the Leafs shouldn't sign Bozak to a 4 or 5 year deal at more than he's worth just because of the limited options that are available to them immediately.

More to the point though I don't really buy the idea that any theoretical negotiations with Kadri's agent or another team in a trade are going to have a ton to do with Bozak. If the Leafs are looking to trade for a centre who's any good then what the Flyers or whoever ask for that player is going to be determined by what other teams are willing to offer, not the Leafs situation at centre. Likewise, I don't think Nonis is going to sign Kadri to a bad deal just because there's a possibility that the team has a bad start to the season. There's always more pressure on an unsigned RFA to sign than there is on his team to sign him.
 
Nik the Trik said:
If, however, we accept the possibility of a 2014-2015 season and beyond than the Leafs shouldn't sign Bozak to a 4 or 5 year deal at more than he's worth just because of the limited options that are available to them immediately.
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Well as long as the deal is trade-able (unlike Grabovski's right now) we're not locked into it forever.  As long as his productivity doesn't take a dive (like say half the PPG like a certain other center we have) he should be pretty movable at 4-4.5M?  Especially in a couple of years as the cap is projected to get back up to around 70M again.
 
pnjunction said:
Well as long as the deal is trade-able (unlike Grabovski's right now) we're not locked into it forever.  As long as his productivity doesn't take a dive (like say half the PPG like a certain other center we have) he should be pretty movable at 4-4.5M?  Especially in a couple of years as the cap is projected to get back up to around 70M again.
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Well, that's not a terrible way of looking at it and I agree it does a good job of maintaining the status quo/retaining the asset but there are two reasons I'd be hesitant to do that.

One, it's very tricky to predict what will or won't be a tradeable deal. You point to Grabo(and for what it's worth I don't know if I agree that he'd be impossible to trade) as a situation where it can get pear-shaped in a hurry and Bozak wouldn't be immune to that. Moreover though, and I think we saw this with Connolly, it can be very difficult to deal a player if he's overpaid even if the other team is taking on very little risk. I think in the case of Bozak there's a very real chance that teams would pass on him not because he has zero value but because at a 1.5-2 million overpay they would have lots of other options to get a player they like just as much at a more reasonable cost. I don't think the Leafs would want to put that sort of thing in another team's hands.

Secondly is that as much as we might not like to think it matters, I do think that a team's pay scale is still relevant. If you give Bozak, say, 4.5-5 million a year it does make negotiating with everyone else a little harder. That isn't to say that's what he'd get, just that it's a reality when looking at the downside of overpaying someone.
 
Bergeron and Krecji make $5 mil and $5.2 mil each per yr...it does seem a little disappointing to give Grabovski and Bozak an equal amount.
 
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