mr grieves
New member
mr grieves said:Frycer14 said:Not going to argue the numbers, but the doesn't the makeup of the team sort of resemble the 16/17 penguins stanley cup teams? High quality top forwards, one or two top defencemen, a good goalie, and a mishmash of spare parts for the bottom part of the lineup?mr grieves said:The salary structure the Leafs have now got is not one that's ever been seen in the Stanley Cup Finals. That's concerning.
Yes, that'd be the model the Leafs are aiming at. But, with their high-quality top forwards under big contracts, the Penguins didn't win until they made some moves for secondary talent and quality depth -- and they could only do that after a couple years passed and the cap rose to push the C.H.% of their top talent down, which gave them the space to add.
Dom at the Athletic looks at top-4 players' cumulative cap hits in his recent piece. A bit of that:
Few teams might have what the team has up front, but no other team is paying for it the way Toronto is... The Bruins aren?t spending 50 percent on Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy... You could go on and on throughout the league. The four highest-paid contracts take up 37 percent of a team?s cap hit on average, thanks to many other stars taking much friendlier deals. The Leafs? 49.7 percent is 5 percentage points higher than the next-highest team: Tampa Bay?s 44.7 percent.
Link: https://theathletic.com/1210323/2019/09/14/can-the-leafs-win-with-their-current-cap-structure-after-signing-mitch-marner/
It's just a snapshot of this coming season, and there's no longitudinal analysis of teams that've made the Finals vs. those that've fallen short. But I think it's safe to conclude, since the Leafs are in uncharted territory, no team that's made the Final has had the Leaf's current cap structure.
Dom's bottom line is a "wait and see" -- a lot hinges on whether Marner did, in fact, re-set the market. If not, they're at a competitive disadvantage for the time being, even if they do avoid the bloated middle class and get a lot out of low-end contracts.