showmethemoneyman said:
I don't see how we are marked a D
Any player signed is a player lost by another team , if one team has improved another has therefore regressed
That only really follows if you forget two things that are pretty important. One, rosters spots are finite. Two, the talent pool isn't.
As a hypothetical, a team could let a player go to free agency but plan to fill his spot with a prospect. The team that signs the the player would improve but so long as the prospect is as good as the departed player nobody regresses.
Add in players signed as free agents from outside of the NHL and there are lots of ways to add talent to a team that doesn't weaken another.
showmethemoneyman said:
We lost nobody to retirement
We have added JVR , McClement and Komarov ; potentially Kostka and Ranger
lost Schenn and Crabb and gustavsson.
As I mentioned above, one of the things to keep in mind is that roster spots are finite. The Leafs right now have 14 forwards on the books and that's not including Colborne, Kadri, Ashton and Komarov. The team obviously can't carry 18 guys up front so to pare that down to the 14-15 that will make the team and 12 that will dress most nights you're bumping a bunch of guys out of the line-up. A player like McClement or Komarov are only additions if they're markedly better than the guys whose spots they're taking
and the guys who might otherwise get their PT.
So even if a guy like Komarov makes the team, which at this point strikes me as a little unlikely, he's probably going to play abunch of games in place of someone like Brown or Lombardi. It's hard to call that a net positive just yet.
showmethemoneyman said:
our biggest signing was a better coach , with a more defence first system.
That is an improvement so we must be at least a C+
Coaching changes are really the sort of thing that have to play out before you can grade them. A lot of people though Wilson would be a big upgrade on Maurice and that didn't work terribly well.