| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Guest4609 |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 11:07:21
You are all dreaming if you think Parise, Brad Richards, Jordan Staal are coming to Toronto anytime soon. Leafs might be better off aquiring the rights to Alexander Radulov from the Preds and throwing a wheel barrow of money at him to jump from the KHL back to the NHL. One thing is certain, Radulov likes the big stage and playing in the big smoke might just appeal to him. |
| 17 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| The Duke |
Posted - 01/05/2011 : 20:14:46
Maybe the leafs are spending too much time inside the BOX at home...all tired out and all...you know.  |
| Guest4609 |
Posted - 01/05/2011 : 10:37:27
I have no problem with building thru the draft but as with the Leafs - that would take a minimun of 5 years - and even then, there would be no guarantees. As for free agents - they are few and far between ..... as for crawling back to the box and going back inside it ... there is no tools in it! Once again, leafs need to look outside the box. |
| Beans15 |
Posted - 01/01/2011 : 14:45:06
quote:
Originally posted by slozo
I think what Fat Elvis is saying, guest 4609, is this:
The Leafs need to walk back to the box, step inside the box, close the lid, and once again start actually thinking from inside it! 
"Take off, eh?" - Bob and Doug
Ding Ding Ding!! We have a winner!!
The thing is that all successful teams have nearly equal parts of draft/develop, trade, and free agent. List out the top 10 teams in the league today and the top 10 for the past 10 seasons and you will see the same.
That's the point. There is no magic bullet to build a hockey team. There is no one move that will change fortunes. Burke's magic bullet (Kessel) has proven to be a piece of the puzzle but not the final piece. Unfortunately, Burke has also limited the Leafs to find the remaining pieces through free agency. The sold the farm with draft picks in the Kessel deal and traded away all his marketable assets last season. Don't tell me Kaberle is an asset as his value is nearly no existent the closer it gets to the trade deadline.
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| n/a |
Posted - 01/01/2011 : 10:27:43
I think what Fat Elvis is saying, guest 4609, is this:
The Leafs need to walk back to the box, step inside the box, close the lid, and once again start actually thinking from inside it!
"Take off, eh?" - Bob and Doug |
| The Duke |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 20:11:31
The leafs aren`t doing so well as i thought they would this season...thats for sure. Toronto is spending the $$$, but certainly not on the right players.
I thought good things would come this season from Phaneuf, Beauc. and Komar. ......funny thing is, these guys have been the let down. TO`s most steady defenseman ( in my opinion have been Schenn, Gunn, and Aulie...the kids ) maybe this should tell us something. Kaberle for the most part is in no - mans land, took his first minor penalty this season - tue. night past...unreal. How soft have you got to play to not take a minor penalty since LAST MARCH !!!
I know the leafs have trouble scoring but their defense was suppose to be their STRENGTH....what a joke. These guys as a unit make major $$$$ and are a complete bust.
I went againist Beans ( who said the leafs are basically sad ) at the beginning of the season...... I said TO` just needs tinkering to be a playoff contender and maybe win a round....i will admit, boy was i wrong.
Toront has to suck up the kessel blunder, ( 2 high first rounders gone ) move on and protect any value they do have in their minor league system and completely rebuild. This is now going to be a much more difficult task because 2 years have already been wasted.
On a brighter note, some of their already good NHL players are only 22 - 25 years old. Burke has to hang on to these guys and start filling in around them. Hopefully someday we will have a competitive team to watch. |
| Guest0015 |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 18:23:11
quote:
[i]
It stuns me at times, how Leaf fans will continue to look for these improvements that will make them contenders, without facing the harsh realities. They will not be a contender anytime soon, and until they understand that and begin a true rebuilding program, they will continue to over-pay, over-trade and over-rate, the players they seem to value as saviors, all the while continuing to under-achieve.
Wow... in the three years or so that I"ve been reading stuff on this site - this is THE paragraph that summarizes everything I've read over these past few years about the Leafs.
well said sir
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| nuxfan |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 11:21:40
quote:
Lol Nuxfan i had stated in another thread that the leafs will not be competitve for a very very long time as the media and fans in the toronto market over scrutenize the franchise.
They scrutinize pretty closely in VAN as well (and most other Canadian cities I would suspect). 98-02 were pretty hard years to be a Canucks fan, and to be a Canucks player too. The press were brutal, outside the diehard fans was general apathy (I got my season tix in 02, just by applying - now there is an 8 year waiting list and a 99% renewal rate). You just have to be ready to live through those bad years.
Look at EDM - after the cup run, they got pretty bad pretty fast. The last 2 years, brutal. You have to go through that to rebuild your team, in 3-5 years EDM should be a force again, they have promise up the wazoo. The faithful have stuck with them through the bad times, and they'll be rewarded eventually. CGY needs only to look north to see what is in store for them over the next couple of seasons. The press there have already suggested that a rebuild is required, and it sounds like they're all prepared to have it start.
And you know what, Burke can do this - he has done it before. Burke was GM of the Canucks from 98-04, and he led the Canucks through those dark years. He went out on a limb in 99 and drafted the Sedins 2/3, Bieksa, Kesler in years after, and would have had his hand in the 04 draft of Edler and Schneider. He knows the long term value of good draft and development. |
| Guest7936 |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 10:38:29
"You can go out and get a world class player outside of the NHL without compromising your long term drafting strategy because it doesn`t cost you any assets, only money. If you stay within the realm of the NHL player pool that would not be possible."
Not possible...ever heard of free agency? |
| fat_elvis_rocked |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 10:00:47
I was trying to follow this thread, but am quickly getting slightly confused, in order for Toronto to be successful again, they have to 'think outside the box', by attracting recycled KHL players and that ilk?
They have to find world class players that aren't in the NHL? I don't quite get where that process is going. The best are already there.
Nuxfan explained what a rebuilding process looks like. The Leafs are not a new franchise, if they haven't figured out how to utilize their resources to scout better by now, I am not sure what else can be done.
It stuns me at times, how Leaf fans will continue to look for these improvements that will make them contenders, without facing the harsh realities. They will not be a contender anytime soon, and until they understand that and begin a true rebuilding program, they will continue to over-pay, over-trade and over-rate, the players they seem to value as saviors, all the while continuing to under-achieve.
PS. My thanks to Beans and Mario, in the time it took me to formulate my post, they covered what I was trying to.....must have been a brilliant minds think alike sort of thing.. 
Or maybe more like lemmings and a cliff....  |
| Mario 66 |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 09:54:02
Lol Nuxfan i had stated in another thread that the leafs will not be competitve for a very very long time as the media and fans in the toronto market over scrutenize the franchise. Thus resulting in burke or another gm in a fews yrs to blow the team up and go after big name players just for the sake of the team being respectible but nothing else.
Lemieux owns Gretzky |
| Beans15 |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 09:50:18
quote:
Originally posted by Guest4609
Thats my point. You can go out and get a world class player outside of the NHL without compromising your long term drafting strategy because it doesn`t cost you any assets, only money. If you stay within the realm of the NHL player pool that would not be possible. The other thing you have to do in the longer term is spend the resourses you have to develope a scouting system second to none which is another way of progressing more quickly using your financial assets. Building through the draft is great but finding other ways of speeding up the process by looking outside the box is the best way to go.
Didn't the Leafs try that with Gustovsson??? What about that Brunstrom guy who everyone was doing backflips over before he played in the NHL???
Bottom line, the best pros in the world play in North America. The players in the KHL are 2nd rate. They are mostly 3rd line player in the NHL or over the hill superstars. Radulov is the only player who would be of value, but even he is a 2nd line player on most teams.
The Leafs simply need to such up their loses, eat the time it will take to fix them, and start from scratch. This team is weak and there is only one way to fix it under a cap structure and that is through draft and develop.
Burke is an old school GM who has not adapted to the Cap and I don't believe he can. |
| Guest4609 |
Posted - 12/30/2010 : 08:15:42
Thats my point. You can go out and get a world class player outside of the NHL without compromising your long term drafting strategy because it doesn`t cost you any assets, only money. If you stay within the realm of the NHL player pool that would not be possible. The other thing you have to do in the longer term is spend the resourses you have to develope a scouting system second to none which is another way of progressing more quickly using your financial assets. Building through the draft is great but finding other ways of speeding up the process by looking outside the box is the best way to go. |
| nuxfan |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 15:42:49
The Leafs need to build the same way as any other team - via drafts and development first, and free agents/trades second. That takes time - a lot of time. Burke, or Toronto media and fans, or all 3, don't seem to want to take a lot of time, so they trade away valuable picks for right-now players, rush their prospects into the NHL before they're ready, and heap huge expectations on the players that they can sign as free agents.
So, in this time, while they have loads of money and no prospects, they need to keep their prospects and draft more, while spending money to try and put together a competitive team from year to year. And as they draft a good young core, they develop this core properly, and get better as a team. Fill some holes via free agency and trades, and voila, a team.
I cannot think of another current powerhouse team that has built themselves any other way. PHI, DET, PIT, LAK, CHI last year...all of them built around very good drafting over the ~10 years prior WSH has 11 former first round picks playing on their current roster from the last decade. Look at the success ATL is having this year, or DAL, ANA a few years back. Draft and develop.
Take the Canucks for example - most of the current core was drafted between 1998 and 2004 (Sedins in 99, Bryan Allen (now in FLA, part of the Luongo deal) in 2000, Bieksa in 2001, Kesler in 2003, Schneider/Edler/Hansen in 2004, Raymond in 2005). They have added a few pieces via free agency or trades over the last decade as well - Bertuzzi, Luongo, Erhoff, Samuelsson, Malhotra/Ballard/Hamhuis this past offseason - some are still with VAN, some have been traded for other bits. All of that leads up to the Canucks finally being a contender in 2010 and 2011 (and perhaps for a few more years). Its great to see now, but it all started in 1999 and it was a long and sometimes difficult road to get to now.
I don't think Toronto has the patience to wait 5-10 years to become a contender again. Honestly, the Leafs don't need to think outside the box. They just have to follow the proven model to success that every other team is following. |
| Guest4609 |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 14:38:36
loads of money - no prospects. Okay Nuxfan and your solution would be? |
| nuxfan |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 14:29:12
ah, a free spirit hockey player. just what TOR should sink their money into. |
| Guest4609 |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 11:51:06
I am not so sure he is a KHL guy. From what I have heard, he had no interest in staying in Nashville because it was a small non hockey market. I have also heard that he enjoys playing in Russia but this guy is a free spirit and could change course in a heart beat. He likes the challenge and afterall, he did leave Russia once already to play in the Q. Here is a guy that likes to be the center of attention. What better place than Toronto? |
| Beans15 |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 11:17:53
Radulov is not under contract by the Predators. He had 1 yr remaining on his deal in 08/09 and was suspended w/o pay by the Predators.
NHL contracts are not for number of games, they are for time. If a players wanted to sit out until the end of their contract and then go to a different team they have the abilitiy to do that.
The Leafs can get Radulov is they want without having to aquire anything from the Pred. However, I would suggest it is more likely that Parise, Richards, and Staal are all Leafs at the same time before Radulov returns to the NHL. He's a KHL guy. He loves Russia and has stated no desire to ever play anywhere other than Russa. |
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