McCabe Signs and confirms troubling news on the home front.
Damien Cox clearly doesn't read the sporting press or other Leaf media.
Domi waived and Belfour's option exercised. Be interesting to see if Mr. I'll Retire a Leaf will take advantage of his newfound UFA status.
***UPDATED***
Check your watches, circle the date and make a note in your diary – if reports in the Globe and Toronto Star are to be believed - I’m sending some serious love JFJ’s way today.
Where to begin? RFAs or buy-outs.
OK, buy-outs it is.
The papers are reporting that the Leafs will buy out Tie Domi’s contract by this Friday and that the Leafs will take a $1.25 million dollar cap hit this season in order to say buh-bye to number 28.
Yeah, I can already hear the complaints - he only plays about 8 minutes a game and has been a great fixture on the philanthropy circuit for a decade; he’s best pals with the captain; I’d rather have prospects get real ice time with the Marlies than 8 minutes a game in the NHL; yadda yadda yadda.
Quite simply, the tools Domi brings to the rink are not the ones that are in demand these days. He doesn’t drop the gloves any more and when he does, he chooses to recieve (fast forward to the 30 second mark and try not to shudder); he doesn't stand up for team mates anymore (as the turn and circle after Ondrus got drilled from behind into the boards in Pittsburgh last year amply demonstrates); he doesn’t put the biscuit in the basket (a stretch of 49 games without a goal last season); and he’s taken on a terrible me-first attitude that has no place in hockey, nevermind from a fourth line player. To quote Dr. J, “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do on the days when you don't feel like doing them."
Domi’s two-year, $2.5M contract was a disaster and I don’t care if it was Peddie, Quinn, JFJ or some evil combination of Rumsfield and Cheney that are responsible for it, I’m thrilled to see JFJ step-up to the plate and fix it.
According to the papers, the buyout won’t happen until Friday in case the Leafs are able to deal Domi, but as the buy-out makes Domi an UFA, I can’t see any rational reason why a GM would bite on the current contract, let alone give up a resource in return for Domi, when they’ll be able to negotiate with him free and clear in a week.
With the salary cap officially announced at $44M it’s still a horrible use of resources (nearly 5% of the cap to see the backs of Domi and Belfour) but it had to be done.
On the Restricted Free Agency (RFA) front, the Leafs tendered qualifying offers to 11 players 10 of their 14 RFAs (if anyone has a complete list of the 10 who got offers and the four who didn’t, please post it in the comments section, I’ve only been able to turn up a list of 8 of the 14) and have finally posted the complete list of RFAs tendered qualifying offers.
Of note, only Stajan and Raycroft were given one-way contracts.
Antropov has arbitration rights and with the offer of a $95K minor-league salary on the table, I would not be surprised to see him seek an arbitration hearing. That said, given that the oft-injured Kazahk has seen his stats pretty much flat-line at 55 games/ 27 points a season, I don’t like his odds going into arbitration, but I do love the low-ball offer from the Leafs.
I never thought JFJ would step-up like this. It's like the ending of Scared Straight when you're so pleased to see the troubled kids back on the straight and narrow. I'm just hoping the free agent season doesn't cause any sort of pre-CBA recidivism...
I don’t work the phones with NHL GMs so I can’t say with any certainty what the cost of a acquiring a starting NHL goalie is.
The cost of a third-string, former Calder cup winning, RFA who held out last year and is recovering from innumerable injuries? Apparently the price for that is a top young goaltending prospect.
While the Leafs clearly needed an upgrade in goal, I don’t know that Raycroft is the guy. His stats are very middle of the pack and the history of the NHL is littered with the corpses of highly touted goalies who’ve turned out to be little more than one-year wonders (my gift to you: Steve Penny, Darren Pang, Peter Sidorkiewicz, Jim Carey).
I can’t say I understand the timing on this deal either, the UFA market is just one week away. I can only presume that JFJ has determined that UFA goalies are looking for too much dough or too long a deal and that GMs are asking too much for the rash of over-priced former starters who are supposedly on the market.
If there’s one thing the Raycroft trade absolutely confirms about JFJ's tenure with the Leafs it’s that this reign is all about the high-risk, high-reward deal. Got a former great who’s suffered a horrendous injury? An aging star that’s on a terrible string? An over the hill goalie with a wonky back? A former 40 goal sniper battling some off-ice troubles? Give JFJ a call - he loves these “upside” deals like Isiah Thomas loves his crazy pills.
There are a number of key dates over the next eight days that should be circled on JFJ's calendar, here's a look:
June 22 – Buy-outs begin. NHL Clubs have eight days to terminate Standard Players Contracts.
Look for Steve Simmons’s on-line headshot to be updated with a spinning-hearts-in-his- eyes photo* as his columns are peppered with pro-Domi references through June 30th.
*In the event of a Domi buy-out, spinning hearts to be replaced with frowning Steve photo.
I presume (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that JFJ will have to notify Belfour whether they're paying out his option or renewing his contract during this 8-day window.
June 24 – NHL Entry draft in Vancouver.
Thanks to the lottery, the Leafs could pick no higher than 9th and no lower than 14th. They "won" the 13th selection. Central Scouting has their player evaluations posted here. Mock drafts can be found here, here, and (sort of) here.
June 26 – Deadline for teams to extend qualifying offers to their Restricted Free Agents (RFAs). Leaf RFAs include: Antropov; Stajan; Wellwood; Colaiacovo; Harrison; White; Bell.
June 27 – Restricted Free Agents may make contact with all NHL clubs to gauge interest, but may not sign a contract or offer sheet until July 1
June 30 – First buyout period ends at 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Leafs have until Midnight to confirm McCabe contract or he becomes a UFA.
July 1 – UFA/ RFA Signing Period Begins.
In the event that any of the Leafs RFA's are signed by another NHL club, the Leafs will be compensated as follows:
| Offer | Compensation |
| Under $660,000 | None |
| Over $660,000 to $1 Million | Third Round Pick |
| $1 Million to $2 Million | Second Round Pick |
| $2 Million to $3 Million | First and Third Round Picks |
| $3 Million to $4 Million | First, Second and Third Round Picks |
| $4 Million to $5 Million | Two First Round Picks, a Second and a Third Round Pick |
| Over $5 Million | Four First Round Picks |
Joe O'Connor filed a story in Today's National Post (14/06/06 - Registration required) suggesting the Leafs may be have more players lined-up for buy-outs. The story, Maurice says Leafs must play to contend (who writes these headlines? What's next, Leafs must wear skates to play) ends with this thought:
But while Maurice may have been tight-lipped about what, exactly, the Leafs roster is going to look like next season, he preached the gospel truth in describing what style he wants his team to adopt for 2006-07.
"We are going to play the game that we believe you have to play to win the Stanley Cup," he said. "It's the game that you are seeing now: It's a two-man forecheck ... it's a two-man neutral zone. It's all transition and speed."
It is everything the Leafs, on most nights, were not in 2005-06.
The lumbering Leafs featured a lead-footed Jason Allison, a disinterested Jeff O'Neill and an injury-prone Nik Antropov at forward, while the defence corps boasted a trio of tortoises in Aki Berg, Wade Belak and, before he was traded to New Jersey, Ken Klee.
Belak and O'Neill are among the 12 Toronto players currently under contract for next year. Mats Sundin, Tomas Kaberle, Darcy Tucker, Domi, Chad Kilger, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Mikael Tellqvist, J.S. Aubin, Alexander Steen and Staffan Kronwall are the others. O'Neill, who butted heads with Maurice in Carolina, is rumoured to be headed for a buyout, along with Domi. [emphasis added].
Not to be outdone, the Sun got in on the projected buy-out action too with an article by Bill Lankhof that is so goofy I didn't even want to link to it. It's like Lankhof needed an additional 85 words for his column and assembled a blurb, ransom-note style, from previous Leaf headlines. One thing I'll give him credit for is the blurb's closing line. It really should be the new end piece or "-30-" for every sports column in the Sun. Seriously.)Reports have floated for over two weeks now that the Leafs will buy out the last year of Domi's contract, an option that will cost them $1.25 million (all figures U.S.).
Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the total sum would go against the salary cap for 2006-07, since Domi signed his current deal after he was 35 years of age.
I didn’t have a dog in the hunt this spring. My post-season dreams were crushed sometime between the ink drying on Allison’s contract and the Buds going 0-9 last January. Yeah, the coup de grace may have slid off the stick of Martin St. Louis around the 80 game mark, but the slab in the morgue was prepped for ’05-06 Leafs a long time ago.
I’ll admit I was pretty damn happy to see the Sens crash and burn (I jumped out my seat and yelled when Pominville lit the lamp) and I was hoping the Oil would make the finals, but I certainly wasn’t living and dying with any of these teams. There was no yelling at the TV, cursing refs, relying on silly pre-game routines to keep a win streak alive (knowing full well that I couldn’t have less to do with the outcome of the game).
On the whole, the notion of supporting a second team strikes me as keeping an eye on a special someone just in case you become a widower.
Other than the lack of ulcers, the best thing for me not having the Leafs in the post-season this spring is the perception that I can watch the games in a more rational, less biased way. For example, in G3 on Saturday night I thought the second period had way too many marginal penalties called. Sadly, I started cheering more for the even-up call than for the play on the ice.
I was talking about this rash of penalties with some pals and we got to wondering why the NHL doesn’t keep stats on penalties drawn (or I guess, more accurately, track those players who cause a player on the opposing team to be penalized).
You could call it PD. It would be incredibly easy to do – the player that got dumped, slashed, hooked or pummeled is way more obvious to the statisticians than a lot of what’s currently being tracked such as hits, takeaways, turnovers and, in some cases, second assists.
Who wouldn’t want to know a player’s penalty +/- rating? To know who causes more powerplays than short handed situations?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some teams are already tracking this sort of stuff.
On a more psychological level, it would also be fascinating to find out if keeping such stats actually changed on-ice behaviour. Think of the Hawthorne effect or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
If certain players were near the top of the league in PD, would refs hesitate to make certain calls or would calls go their way? Would we see more diving calls or would players be more likely to dive to pad their PD stats? Would the league leaders in PD be the pests like Ville Nieminen and Matthew Barnaby; stars like Jagr, Ovechkin and Kovalchuk; or some plugger that would surprise us all?
It makes me wonder what other parts of the game can be easily tracked yet remain neglected...
Link
I think I’m one of the rare leaf fans that occassionaly agrees with Damien Cox, but I can’t say I agree with his absurd post in his blog The Spin at the Star.
He writes:
[If the Canes win] its sure going to make all the crap spewed by Pat Quinn and others with the Maple Leafs in recent years look like, well, crap. These guys tried to convince hockey fans that winning championships was a crapshoot, that in a 30-team league it was as much about luck than an excellence and what really mattered was accumulating the greatest amount of playoff games over the course of three or four seasons.
It’s hard to know where to begin in taking this paragraph apart.
Steve Simmons recently filed this blurb at the end of a column:
Buying out Tie Domi would cost the Leafs $833,000 US. Replacing him on the fourth line will cost a minimum of $450,000. In other words, the Leafs would be paying more to replace him ($1.28 million) than to keep him ($1.25 million).It’s an interesting aside but I’m not so sure that Simmons is right on the math, his reading of the CBA or even the implicit message that the Leafs are better off keeping Domi and “saving” $300K.
All Player Salary and Bonuses earned in a League Year by a Player who is in the second or later year of a multi-year SPC [Standard Player Contract] which was signed when the Player was age 35 or older (as of June 30 of the League Year in which the SPC is to be effective), regardless of whether, or where, the Player is playing, except to the extent the Player is playing under his SPC in the minor leagues, in which case only the Player Salary and Bonuses in excess of $100,000 shall count towards the calculation of Actual Club Salary;As Domi is indeed over 35 and in the second year of a multi-year deal if the Leafs were to waive him or induce him into retirement (and this is a HUGE if), Domi’s NHL salary and any bonuses would be counted as part of the Leafs’ total salary. (If Domi had been waived last season, a la Alexander Mogilny in New Jersey, the first year of his contract would not have counted against the cap - but the second half would).
This work by M. Forbes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
