Leafs Trade Analysis: Two Loonies for a Twonie

On Sunday, Leafs GM Brian Burke pulled off two trades:

Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake to Anaheim for J.S. Giguere.

Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and Ian White for Dion Phaneuf, Frederik Sjostrom and prospect Keith Aulie.

At this point, I've got way more questions than answers...

Anaheim

Giguere for Blake and Toskala is like a twonie for two loonies.

I’m glad Toskala and Blake are gone, but I’m not expecting anything from Giguere. He’s had below average numbers for two-seasons running and is unlikely to improve next year when there’s a further crackdown on the size of goaltending gear.

With little to no goaltending options on the UFA market this summer, Burke has ostensibly bought one more year of slightly below-average goaltending.

Dion Phaneuf

Dion Phaneuf hasn’t progressed as projected or in keeping with his (massive) paycheque.

His goal scoring production has declined every season he’s been in the NHL and he’s struggled the past two seasons.

Many in the game have noted that his play away from the puck is poor and has been resistant to changing his game.

Among NHL d-men, he’s currently 9th in goals scored, 69th in assists and 42nd in points. To put that in perspective, his 22 points put him in a tie with Francois Beauchemin.

On the D-side of the puck, his GA60 is a respectable 2.4, which puts him in the top third of NHL defencmen (73rd among the 212 D-men that have played a minimum 20+ games this year). On the Leafs that would place him behind both Beauchemin (2.13) and Komisarek (1.88).

And the Leafs get all of this for the incredible cap hit of $6.5M through 2014.

Wait.

That can’t be right.

Phaneuf is 73rd in GAON/60. 42nd in Points and he has the 8th highest cap hit among d-men in the league?!?

Wow.

Was Glen Sather a consultant to Sutter on that contract?

Cap Space Moving Forward: 2010-11

At $25M+ the Leafs have a whole lot of dollars tied up on six blue liners next season.

In net, the Leafs have $6M allotted for Giguere while Jonas Gustavsson is an RFA.

Up-front the Leafs have just four guys under contract guys (Kessel, Gustavsson, Sjostrom and Orr) and they’ll cost the club $10.1M in salary with a passel of RFAs and UFAs still to sort out.

Fold in the Darcy Tucker buy-out and the Leafs have $42M+ in committed salaries for 2010-11.

If the cap stays neutral, the Leafs have about $14M to sign 9 forwards and a back-up goalie, which averages out to about $1.4M per signing.

Clearly, something’s got to give here.

The big question, just like every year since the lock-out, is who gets moved from the Leafs blue-line to provide some help up front?

Player Development

Draft and develop has become a bit of a mantra in the NHL. The Leafs don’t really do the former and the latter - development - is where the fall-out from today’s deals could really hit this club.

In an effort to in-fill the forward lines and find some offence, the development curve for all of the Leafs youngsters just got a whole lot steeper.

Hanson, Bozak and Stalberg won’t have the luxury of a year in the “A” with spot duty on the Leafs to develop. They’ll be eating real minutes over the next 30 games.

Given all the holes to fill up front, and the limited resources to do so, there’s also a real chance Nazem Kadri gets a shot a next season right out of the OHL. No AHL development time for the London Knight (and a year of his entry level deal cashed in too).

Of course, the Leafs could run with veteran UFAs on one-year contracts to buy their kids more development time – while that's something I hope the Burke-Nonis brain trust explores, I don't see it happening (I got no proof, just what my guy gut says).

2012: AKA The fine print

Here comes the giant caveat: with the CBA set to expire in 2011, this whole issue of contract hits and cap room could quickly become moot. Phaneuf’s contract, and the Leafs’ salary cap situation, becomes eminently more manageable if there’s any type of luxury tax or an NBA-like luxury tax amnesty provision.

Until then, I'm treating the rest of this season as a 30 game exhibition schedule: the games don't count, it's all about evaluating talent.

Fifteen steps, then a sheer drop

The NHL trade deadline is exactly eight weeks away and the Leafs have finally made their first move under Burke.

Gak. It's a 6th rounder for Brad May.

I do belive I called this one back on November 12 although I was only aiming for a cheap and easy punchline. The odds of a sixth rounder turning into a NHLer are pretty small, although it's likely about the same odds that May will do anything of note for the Leafs before he hits UFA status in June.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this move will generate more speculation into Brian Burke's intentions and efforts than the Kennedy assasination (Conspiracy A Go-Go really is the ultimate source on all things JFK) and the future of the North American auto industry combined.

With that in mind, I wanted to post two things today.

The first is the limited information I could find regarding no-trade (NTC) and no-movement clauses (NMC) on the Leafs that Burke will have to deal with.

The second was cap formulas to get a better understanding of how a trade might go down.

NTCs and NMCs

I've been hoping one of the 173 people that cover the Leafs full-time as a paid gig might look into this, maybe call the team, the agents for Hagman, Kaberle and Kubina or send an email to the NHLPA, I know I'm talking crazy, but one can hope...

This is what I was able to turn up from NHLSCAP, old radio interviews with JFJ and searches through the Globe and Star. Only three players on the Leafs appear to have trade limitations:

Niklas Hagman - has a N0-Movement Clause for the first year of his contract with the Leafs. The clause expires after year one.

Tomas Kaberle - has a No-Trade Clause. It's believed that if (let's face it: when) the Leafs miss the playoffs, there is a window in the summer during which Kaberle can be traded without his consent. If it's the same time period as identified in Kubina's contract, the trade window is July 1 to August 15. Sadly, that's 10 days after the entry draft.

Pavel Kubina - has a modified No-Trade Clause. According to various sources, he can only be traded to a list of pre-specified teams (no word on who submits the list or the number of teams it includes/excludes). Last year, there was a window between between July 1 and August 15 where we could have been traded without his consent, it's not clear if that was a one-time window or if it opens every summer if the Leafs don't make the playoffs.

I could find no other references to any of the other Leafs having NMCs or NTCs.

Cap Space, Cap Hits and Further Evidence That Math is Hard

The second challenge facing Burke as he tries to transform the Leafs is the lack of trading partners with cap space.

With nearly a third of the league hard against the cap and another third up against self-imposed budget limits, the Leafs are likely going to have to take on near dollar-for-dollar salary commitments in order to complete a trade. (Not to make things un-necessarilyl complicated but the NHL salary cap is actually calculated on a daily basis. Team's cannot exceed a per day salary limit of $296,858.64. Nik Antropov, for example, would cost a team $10,732.98 per day in cap space.)

In short: Leafs Nation can dream of picks and prospects, but the reality is most trades are likely going to bring back some ugly contracts.

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