mr grieves said:
Yeah, I was looking at the years before. The team's always been about at the cap.
But that's been because, as alluded to, during the Burke era the team was always in a position to take advantage of the cap because of the team's strong financial capabilities. Being at/near the cap with a team that bad was in large part because of things like being able/willing to take on Lombardi's contract or taking a flyer on a guy like Connolly or giving Mike Komisarek all of the time in the world to figure things out. They had flexibility because they were a bad team and they used that flexibility where and when it suited them. As the team improved they were always going to lose that flexibility and that's more or less what we've seen albeit, admittedly, parts of that are self-inflicted.
mr grieves said:
And the raises given to talent that's developed over the Burke years and into the Nonis ones (the 'coming from within as the team improves') are relatively few and, I think we agree, mostly from the periphery of the core: Lupul, Kadri, Bozak, Gunnarson... who else?
Well, now we'd have to include things like Franson and Fraser, I suppose but there's also things like Reimer's bridge deal and Schenn going from guy on a ELC to guy on a healthy second contract to being an even better paid JVR to Kulemin getting a raise to Liles coming on board to the raises given to guys who aren't here anymore but are certainly indicative of how a team is naturally going to push up against the salary cap as they, and the team, improves. Individually they're not huge but cumulatively we're talking about 10+ million dollars which is the majority of the difference between a team at the floor and a team at the cap ceiling. Whereas the Burke Leafs had a ton of dead weight in guys like Lombardi, Komisarek and Connolly at various points right now, with the possible exception of Liles, there isn't anyone on the team in their current position that they could give up and whose replacement wouldn't be A) necessary and B) as costly as they are.
mr grieves said:
It just seems the team's marched farther up that hill than you'd expect, given that key parts of their core haven't yet signed the large, expensive extensions that are the inevitable part of the increase. The Leafs are still counting on guys playing above their value their make the cap work, and I don't know how that works when the guys doing that are your core -- Kessel, Gardiner, Reimer, Bernier -- and they'll soon need new contracts.
One of the things that I think we agree on, and that makes your constant restating of it fairly unnecessary, is that I've never disagreed with the idea that what Nonis has done this off-season has put a ton of eggs in the Clarkson/Bozak/Bernier basket, if you forgive the messy idiom. I absolutely agree he's pushed his chips to the middle of the table and, as someone who's also said that I didn't like the Clarkson signing and am largely indifferent to the differences between Bozak and Grabo, I agree that he's done so without the strongest cards.
Where I think we fundamentally differ, or not because I don't think I've seen you address this much, is that I think what Nonis did this off-season was a natural and reasonable extension of the Brian Burke philosophy and that his only two real options were what he did or blow the team up and I don't think he had a mandate to blow the team up.
The thing that we heard again and again during the Burke era, so much so that some posters made it parts of their signatures was that Burke didn't believe in the "Pittsburgh" model and that the "retooling" he favoured was one where the biggest parts of the team's success was going to come from fairly unconventional sources: later round draft picks, free agency, theoretically good trades and so on. However as we've seen, those things are getting harder and harder to do. Teams are getting smarter in the draft, teams are less inclined to give away superstars and, most importantly, free agency is looking like a less and less viable method of team building.
This year could have been an amazing UFA year. It could have been Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf and Shea Weber at the top of it. But because of the strict new limits on free agent deals there's less and less incentive for players to start bidding wars. That, I think, is going to lead to a pretty consistent group of lousy UFA classes especially when it looks like teams are going to be less and less inclined to let players reach free agency and lose them for nothing. So we had a free agency class headed by guys who were either determined to go elsewhere(Horton), were available because of very unique circumstances(Lecavalier) or whose value got inflated because of the relative weakness of the free agents available(Clarkson, everyone else).
So if free agency is getting worse and worse and if a increasing cap will give teams more money to spend on mediocre free agents I think you're going to see free agency get stupider and stupider.
In light of that, how are we realistically expecting Nonis to close the gap on the contenders? How is he going to assemble a roster that resembles the cup winners we've recently seen? Teams usually win cups with their #1 defensemen being guys like Duncan Keith or Chara or Pronger or Lidstrom. Their top centres are Toews and Datsyuk and Crosby. I know you feel that some of the Leafs success this year was an illusion caused by luck but I'm guessing you don't believe that to the extent that you think that, absent the moves Nonis made, they were a bad enough team to finish near the bottom of the league(or even still, given your low opinion of those moves). If that's so then, realistically, how was Nonis going to add those guys to the team without top 5 draft picks and with the free agency market on a downward slide where even if a top flight player were available teams hands are tied in terms of offering them well above what someone else could offer?
I'm not saying that the approach that he took was the right answer to that. I'm not saying that Bozak and Clarkson represent a meaningful step in that direction and if you're inclined to say it's a step backwards, like I said, I'm more on board that than not. My point though has always been that this seems like the
other option. If he's not blowing the team up, he has to go all in on this group. If the team could only add one big ticket free agent to their core I'd have much preferred it to be someone like Ryan Getzlaf than David Clarkson but I think we have to operate in a world where the Ryan Getzlafs of the world aren't going to be available and even if they are there's no way to know where they'll sign.
So when you talk about things like not signing Clarkson or going with Grabo over Bozak and buying out Liles or making a big push to sign Andrew Ference...I feel like you're arguing about Christmas Tree ornaments when the house is on fire.
