While MLSE continues to develop high-rise condo complexes downtown, the construction that many Torontonians will be interested in over the summer will be headed by Dave Nonis, as he strives to improve the Maple Leafs after making the playoffs for the first time in nine years.
This will be the first off-season for Nonis as Leafs GM and it is expected that his management style and method of acquiring talent will be more flexible than that of former boss Brian Burke.
No longer is there a philosophical barrier from signing restricted free agents to offer sheets, as there was with Burke after Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe nabbed Dustin Penner from Anaheim in the summer of 2007. There will not be an early Christmas trade freeze and with new MLSE chairman Tim Lieweke a fan of splashy transactions, it is likely that Nonis will have carte blanche to make a bold maneuver at the NHL Draft in Newark, NJ on June 30 or in early July.
Toronto has the cap room to sign free agents or take on a high salaried player in a trade from a team looking to shed payroll to get under the $64 Million salary cap, but where the Leafs could get more creative is in the use of their compliance buyouts.
“We are in fairly good position, cap wise…we’re not in a position where we have to shed money.” Nonis said at his end of the season press conference. “There is going to be two ways for teams to do that. One is going to be compliance buyouts and the other is going to be to move bodies.”
The Leafs have two buyouts to be used over the next two summers. One is expected to be used on defenseman Mike Komisarek, but there is not an obvious choice for the other buyout, as Mikhail Grabovski and John-Michael Liles have value but are overpriced and have significant term left on their deals.
Could Toronto use their fiscal muscle to buyout another team’s bad contract??
Before you say that suggestion is ridiculous, consider the crippling situations in Vancouver with Roberto Luongo, Tampa Bay with Vincent Lecavalier or the Islanders with Rick Dipietro and what those clubs would do to get out of them.
HNIC’s Elliotte Friedman reported on Saturday’s “Hotstove Tonight” that New York has communicated to other NHL clubs that they would be willing to give assets to someone if they were willing to take Dipietro’s contract in a trade.
Dipietro is under contract until 2020-21 at a $4.5 Million annual salary and if bought out this summer, it would cost Isles owner Charles Wang $24 Million over the next 16 seasons, but if New York were willing to give something of value to make the Dipietro problem go away, like ’11 top pick and Mississauga native Ryan Strome or 2012 first rounder Griffin Reinhart for example, would it not be worth the cost to a team with deep pockets like the Leafs to make that kind of move to bring in a potential building block that has not even reached the age of 20???
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