Leafs Trade Stralman

To Calgary: Colin Stuart, Anton Stralman, 2012 7th round pick
To Toronto: Wayne Primeau, 2011 2nd round pick.

What this deal is all about

Acquiring yet another less-talented sibling.

I predict Nicolas Cage will star in a movie as a Leafs' GM who finds a secret book. The book dictates that the Leaf franchise cannot go more than five years without having a lesser-talented sibling of another NHLer on their roster.

By solving a series of complex, historically-based riddles the film will reveal why the Leafs had to trade for the likes of Wayne Primeau, Marian Statsny, Jim Benning, Aaron Broten, Miroslav Ihnacak, Bill Kitchen, Dan Maloney, Rich Sutter, Mike Stevens (brother of Scott Stevens!) and Gary Yaremchuk and how doom awaits the Leafs' GM who does not fulfill this prophecy.

The Actual Obligatory Post-Trade Analysis

As just about every storyline has it, there was little to no room for Stralman on the Leafs blueline. The young Swede was 9th or 10th on the depth chart, is a pending RFA and, as he's no longer waiver exempt. The Leafs were either going to move Stralman now or lose him on the waiver wire in September/October.

A second round pick for a future waiver wire loss isn't that bad.

In an email that was going around last night, I compared the Stralman for Primeau trade to the Leafs dealing Chris McCallister for Darby Hendrickson: a once promising D-man for a marginal forward.

The more I think about it, the less I like that analogy. For one, the Leafs dealt away the marginal forward for a promising D-man (D'oh! I had the trade backwards), but more importantly Hendrickson had some real potential (Named Minneosta's Mr. Hockey in 1991). He would go on to play five more seasons in the NHL, something not even a kool-aid drinking Leaf fan would think the 33 year old, broken-down Wayne Primeau is capable of.

The more I think about the Stralman trade, the more I think the Leafs' acquisition of Rich Sutter might be a better analogy.

At the time of the deal, Sutter was heralded as a gritty, good-in-the-room, off-ice-leadership, 3rd or 4th line kind of guy. Like Primeau, Sutter was the less talented brother of another NHLer and just like Primeau, Sutter's best years were behind him. In the end, Sutter played all of 18 games for the Leafs, generating 3 assists, going minus 7 and then calling it a career.

Like Sutter, I doubt Primeau lasts the year with the Leafs. His contract expires after this season and I wouldn't be surprised if he spends more time on the IR than he does in uniform.

Toronto Sports: The Blame Game

With not much going on with my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, I thought I'd make a decision tree for some of Toronto's sports reporters who might be looking for easy story ideas. Unfortunately, this came out a little blurry - you can click on the image for a bigger, clearer, look.

The Leafs in Six Words or Less

One of the more interesting books I read this year is Smith Magazine's Not Quite What I was Planning. The magazine asked people to submit a six word memoir and collected some of the best in a book. These memoirs demonstrate just how powerful six well chosen words can be.

A small sample:

"I still make coffee for two."

"Found true love, married someone else"

"Adopted? Are you fucking shitting me?"

"Brought it to a boil, often" (Mario Batali)

"Well, I thought it was funny." (Stephen Colbert)

About every 10 days or so, I post five questions over at uber Leaf blog Pension Plan Puppets. This week, I asked the readers at PPP to sum up their relationship with the Leafs in six words or less.

As usual, they rose to the challenge with some fantastic responses, here's a sample:

Whole-hearted, long-suffering love and devotion - Karina
I was saved by the Barilkosphere - Archimedes
One Day They’ll Love Me Back - PPP
Because easy love is for suckers - Jaredfromlondon
Vengeance will be ours to savour - Blindfolded Tank Driver
Leaf junkie, no hope of recovery - Blurr1974
Value the journey, not the destination - floridaLEAF
Old team moved, stunk, hello Toronto - Chemmy
One Cup please, in my lifetime - Sergei Puckizin
I’d rather stay in Saturday night - Leaf in Habland
Pure, undying loyalty. Or a disease - Leaf Fan Stuck in Ottawa
You had me at Bill Berg - Godd Till
No recent Cups, one coming soon - Aschendancy

Here's mine:
From Sittler to Sundin, still waiting

Would love to hear yours...

Leafs Nation Demographics and Media Partners

Given last year’s posts around the ‘Net on the future of the Leafs fan-base and the challenges of marketing an, ahem, less than successful franchise I thought it was fascinating to note the Leafs’ media partners for this season’s free exhibition game.

The Back Story

The dominant narrative structure out there, if it’s to be believed, suggests that the Leafs’ long-term fan support is threatened by four things: high ticket prices, lack of ticket availability, crappy on-ice product and the changing demographics of Toronto and the GTA.

The first two points are never going to change. High ticket demand enables high prices. So long as the Canadian tax code enables corporations to write-off 50% on every leaf ticket the lower-bowl is going to be full of suits and sushi. Up in the cheap(er) seats, the Leafs’ prices are actually in-line with what the other Canadian franchises are charging. In fact the Leafs purples are cheaper than the Canucks and only $0.50 more than the Oilers’ cheap seats.

But let's not let that get in the way of a good meme.

The hiring of Burke is perhaps the best move the Leafs have made post-lockout and certainly sends the message that ownership and management are committed to winning.

That leaves the changing demographics of the GTA.

One look at the media partners for the unfortunately named Coca-Cola Zero Fans First Game and it’s clear MLSE has realized the importance of reaching out to different communities and nurturing new fans. In addition to the standard bearers Toronto Star and AM640, the Leafs have partnered with: Pavarsi.com, HindiTimes.com, EpochTimes.com, SingTao.ca, elcorreo.ca and RussianExpress.net.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two South Asian pubs, two Chinese pubs, a Spanish and a Russian outlet.

It's like someone at MLSE actually knows what they're doing.

Leafs, Tampering and a Modest Proposal

In 1986, the Detroit Red Wings were so bad they might as well have played in boots.

Coach Harry Neale got the team off to a 8-23-4 record before being fired. His replacement Brad Park was even worse, going 9-34-2 the rest of the way.

At the end of the '86 season, Red Wings GM Jim Devellano knew he had to make a change behind the bench and offered the coaching job to Jacques Demers.

There was one problem though, Demers was under contract to the St. Louis Blues.

Oh, and Devellano decided he'd phone Demers each and every week to check on Demers on-going contract negotiations with St. Louis. Those phone records ended up on the front page of the Detroit News.

You can't get a more clear cut case of tampering.

The Blues filed a grievance with the NHL and the league found in the Blues' favour.

The Red Wings punishment? They had to play one exhibition game against the Blues each year for 3 years in a city of St. Louis' choosing with the gate receipts going to the Blues.

A few weeks back, Ron Wilson mentioned that the Leafs might possibly be considering maybe offering the Sedins a UFA contract. It was 30 seconds of inconsequential media blather.

The Vancouver media (but notably, not the Canucks) cried foul, charging the Leafs with tampering.

Clearly, there's very little to these charges from Canucks fans and the media chorus, but I think MLSE should offer to meet Vancouver half-way.

Here's my proposal:

I think the Leafs should offer to play Vancouver in an exhibition match in the city of Vancouver's choosing once a year for the next three years. Doesn't matter where the game takes place - Seattle, Kansas City or Manch Picchu - those three games would be a great chance for Leaf fans to come out and see their favourite team play and to turn the games into a "home" game for the Blue and White.

Vancouver gets some additional gate revenue, Leaf fans get to cheer on their favourite team and hockey fans everywhere get to put an end to the whining.

Seems to me, this is a punishment that fits the crime.

The Price of Truculence

In his recent make-over of the Leafs, Burke picked up three players who combined for 434 penalty minutes last season.

To put that total in perspective, the entire Carolina Hurricanes roster put up just 786 PiMs and the Red Wings just 810.

The Orr, Exelby, Komisarek trifecta had exactly half of the PiMs taken by the third least penalized club in the NHL the Minnesota Wild.

If the Leafs and their new players are penalized at the same rate as last season, the Leafs will easily be the most penalized team in the NHL racking up over 1400 PiMs.

That works out to an additional 4 minutes in the box each and every game or about 17 penalty minutes a night.

Now I’m not saying that it’s a given that the Leafs are going to lead the league in penalty minutes or that there’s some sort of linear progression or predictive model here. But I am saying that the Leafs are going to be spending far more time in the penalty box in 2009-2010, which may be a huge price to pay for Burke’s much vaunted truculence.

The reason smash mouth hockey worked for Burke in Anaheim was that his Ducks could roll out some of the best PK talent in the league: Pahlsson, Pronger, Beauchemin, Moen and Marchant.

It’s an entirely different story in Toronto.

Since the lockout, the Leafs penalty kill has been ranked 24th; 27th; 29th; and 30th.

If the Leafs continue to kill penalties at their average post-lockout rate of about 78%, this team will need a bigger scoreboard to keep track of the goals against.

The Leafs have about $5M in cap space remaining. They might want to put this toward some solid PK talent.

Komisarek is a good start. He led the Habs in short-handed time on ice (SHTOI) and the Habs put up the 11th best PK in the league.

Exelby? He was fourth among D-men in Atlanta in SHTOI, but Atlanta had the 29th ranked PK in the league.

If the Leafs can’t improve their PK this season, it pretty much won’t matter what other moves Burke makes.

The Leafs and UFA Season: Day One

So this is what Brian Burke meant when he said "truculent."

On the first day of NHL free agency the Leafs acquired heavyweight RW Colton Orr (4 years/ $1M per) and D Mike Komisarek (5 years/ $4.25M per).

The Leafs also traded D Pavel Kubina to Atlanta along with AHLer Tim Stapleton for D Garnet Exelby and AHLer Mark Stuart. The deal freed up $3M in cap space for the Leafs.

The Roster

The Leafs may have added some toughness to the roster, but I have to think more changes are coming to address their weakness down the middle, to replace some of the offense that was lost with the departures of Moore, Antropov and Kubina, and to clear the log jam on D (by my count, there are nine NHL ready bodies back there).

Here's a look at where the Leafs currently stand in terms of bodies and cap hits:

Centres

1. Mikhail Grabovski (RFA)
2. Matt Stajan
3. Jiri Tlusty
4. John Mitchell
5. Tyler Bozak
6. Christian Hanson

There's no way to get around this, that's one thin, soft, inexperienced group of pivots. The Leafs really don't have a centre that can log the tough minutes against top competition.

There's only three legit NHL players on that list, one of whom hasn't signed a contract with the Leafs (Grabovski) another disappeared for the second half of the season and is about as physical as a ghost (Stajan) and a third who demonstrated he's a solid #4 centre that might have the jam to play in the #3 slot (Mitchell).

Tlusty put up some nice numbers with the Marlies but hasn't done anything to show he can stick in the bigs and Bozak and Hanson, late season signings out of the NCAA, have games that are completely unknown at the pro level.

Left Wing

1. Niklas Hagman
2. Nikolai Kulemin
3. Jason Blake
4. Alexi Ponikarovski

One of the few positions where the Leafs have a bit of depth, although this doesn't exactly line-up with Burke's notion of a top six that can skate and score and a bottom six that can crash and bang. It also isn't the most physical or compelling group of forwards. Still, they're all a threat to cash in 20 goals and they're all good skaters with pretty good speed.

Right Wing

1. Lee Stempniak
2. Jamal Mayers
3. Colton Orr

Yeah, this isn't pretty is it?

At best (and that's being kind) this is a 2,3,4 collection of skaters, if not flat out 3rd and 4th line talent.

One of Kulemin or Hagman will likely play the right side, pushing this group down to the 2,3,4 slots with one of the additional centres picking up time on the left wing.

Clearly the Leafs need some help on the right-side.

Defense

1. Michael Komisarek
2. Tomas Kaberle
3. Garnet Exelby
4. Luke Schenn
5. Jeff Finger
6. Mike Van Ryn
7. Jonas Frogren
8. Ian White
9. Anton Stralman

The big change here might not be the Kubina deal or the acquisition of Komisarek, it might just be the loss of waiver exemptions. Unlike last season, if the Leafs need to move Frogren or Stralman between the Leafs and Marlies they'll have to expose them to waivers and risk losing them to another club.

I could see the Leafs going with a 23 man roster and carrying 8 D, but even at that one more of these guys has to go (or they wait for game four or five by which time Van Ryn should be on the IR).

The Cap

By my math, the Leafs have $20,560,833 tied up in this group of forwards, $22,163,334 committed to D (though it will be anywhere from $731K to $4M lower once one of these bodies are shipped out of town) and $4M tied up in Toskala.

That's good for a $46,725 million cap hit, although the Leafs need to sign someone to back-up Toskala and they need to determine remuneration for Grabovski. Call it $50M once those two accounts are settled.

Balancing the Roster

The Leafs should have $5M+ remaining to secure a more solid presence up the middle and/or some talent on the right hand side that can score.

I suspect the issue at forward will be partially addressed through a UFA signing and by trading one of the excess parts on D.

Should be interesting to see what else Burke and the Leafs are up to over the next few days.