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Negotiation miscues coming back to bite Leafs; CN Tower debacle

June 9, 2021, 3:42 PM ET [206 Comments]
Mike Augello
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The NHL is closing in on their Final Four, as the Tampa Bay Lightning advanced to the Stanley Cup semi-final with a 2-0 win to eliminate Carolina in five games and the Vegas Golden Knights took a 3-2 lead in their best-of-seven series with Colorado with a 3-2 win on a Mark Stone overtime goal.

The Lightning have to be considered a good bet to repeat as Cup champions thanks to their superior talent recognition in finding gems like Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli and Ondrej Palat in the lower rounds on top of their first round successes Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy, and their ability of keeping them in the fold with the advantage of Florida not having state taxes.

Kucherov, Stamkos, and Hedman all took deals under market value because of the tax situation and to keep a club that had not won a Cup together and under GM’s Steve Yzerman and Juilien Brisebois established that as a team philosophy.

After scoring 92 points in 2019, Point did not break the bank on a long-term mega deal like Mitch Marner did that summer, instead the talented forward took a three-year bridge deal for $6.75 million AAV that allowed the Lightning to keep their roster intact.

The Leafs in retrospect set the wrong precedent back in December 2018, succumbing to the demands of William Nylander that saw him sign a six-year deal for more than Point ($6.962 million AAV). That led to Toronto extending Auston Matthews for only five years instead of eight for the second-highest salary in the NHL behind Connor McDavid and giving Marner nearly as much as Matthews and John Tavares on a six-year extension.

There is no doubt based on the situation the Leafs face this summer, with the prospect of losing Zach Hyman to free agency and with Morgan Rielly a year away from being free to test the open market, that Lou Lamoriello made a mistake in not being proactive in signing Nylander when he became eligible for a new deal in 2017 and that Kyle Dubas erred in not being firm on getting him a bridge deal like Point or forcing him to sit out the season or making a trade.

Dubas would have been able to be more firm with Matthews and Marner in negotiations to get better deals and that may have resulted in more cap flexibility over the last couple seasons. After moving out the likes of Patrick Marleau, Kasperi Kapanen, Nazem Kadri, and Andreas Johnsson for cap reasons, the Leafs going into this offseason face more difficult decisions on which important player to move, all because they did not stay disciplined in keeping their core group’s salaries in check.

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Won’t go on too long about this, but the lighting of the CN Tower in Bleu, Blanc et Rouge in honor of the Montreal Canadiens sweep over Winnipeg is a 1815 foot knife in the back of the Maple Leafs and their fans in Toronto. Understanding that CN is a national company, but the tower is based in Toronto and recognizing the victory of their most hated rival is totally disgraceful.





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