The Jake Muzzin Situation

I left work today with my phone at 1% battery, so I get to the car, plug my phone in, and I’ve got 10 notifications saying “Dance, CBA man, dance!” The people demand to know why Latvian legend Kristians Rubins and KHL stud Brennan Menell have emerged on the Leafs roster seemingly out of nowhere.
As you likely know by now, the Leafs recalled those two defencemen and subsequently loaned Rasmus Sandin to the minors. This was an attempt to get as close to the upper limit as possible before placing Jake Muzzin and his $5.625m cap hit on LTIR. In the most simple terms, teams do this because any unused cap space at the time a player is placed on LTIR is lost.
Typically this is demonstrated by saying a team has an $80m cap hit on an $81.5m upper limit. That team has a $5m player they want to put on LTIR, and no matter what, the day they place that player on LTIR they will have exactly $5m in cap space. If they make no roster moves, $1.5m is essentially lost. If they recall two players with a $750k cap hit before placing said player on LTIR, t …

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Author: Earl Schwartz / The Leafs Nation

The day-to-day grind of a former 33rd-round pick

It’s early in the morning. The sound of an alarm on a phone rings through the main floor of a house. The summer sun shines through the big window in the living room. It’s time to wake up and get at another hot day.

A young man slowly reaches for the phone on the floor beside him and turns off the ringing sound. He rolls off of the air mattress that he’s been sleeping on for the past couple of months. He looks around the living room. His suitcase is in the corner; clothes scattered on the floor; his friend sleeps a couple of feet away from him in a sleeping bag on an old couch. He walks through the barren hallway. There are no pictures hanging on any of the walls. He enters the kitchen, turns on the tap, and helps himself to a glass of water. The sink is full of dirty dishes. He washes a couple of them. He walks back into the living room, quickly changes, grabs his gym bag, some other things, and yells to his roommates scattered throughout the house that he’s heading out to the yard.
This is not …

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Author: Ryan Di Francesco / Blue Jays Nation