The Leafs “Cap Hell” narrative dies in the summer of 2023

It seems weird to be looking ahead to the offseason and not immediately be freaking out about Toronto’s cap situation. It’s a luxury we haven’t had in a while. The big four are signed for one more year anyway, the Leafs blueline comes in on an absolute bargain, and the Leafs will likely have some worthwhile entry level contracts taking up spots on the roster as well giving Toronto the opportunity to dress players that are far exceeding their contracts. It’s a rosy picture and that’s even before you get to the McCabe and Giordano cap hits.
As much as it may fall into the situation of being way too early to do this, it also feels like with the trade deadline behind us it now gives us a first look at who are the players that are going to need to be re-signed and opens the debate about what pending free agents could be returning or not.
Let’s start with what the signed roster looks like:

When it comes to the defense, the Leafs are pretty close to being ready to go. There needs to be some consideration given to a seventh defenseman, and I’m sure the Leafs would love it to be Luke Schenn depending on how he looks over the next month and what his next deal would cost them. Justin Holl has likely been priced out of Toronto and I’m not sure that is going to bother a lot of people other than maybe Sheldon Keefe. He has been good at times, but decidedly not at others. It seems like Schenn as the typical tough bottom six option splitting time with Timmins is the way the Leafs would enter the season.
The biggest question mark is probably what becomes of Jake Muzzin, who in all likelihood is destined for a year on the LTIR before his contract expires, but if that’s not the case, he’s …

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Author: Jon Steitzer / The Leafs Nation

Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that baseball doesn’t have an ideal term for the non-pitcher part of the roster? You can say “the fielders” but there’s also a DH, you can say “the lineup” but there are bench players, you can say “the offence” but almost every player has to be considered on the defensive spectrum as well. Anyway, you get the idea.

As the third and final installment of this mini-series, this one has a lot of just stating the obvious, the same way I did with the top three starting pitchers, but also a maybe surprising amount of caveats and qualifications to anything that you might want to firmly declare. But we need a starting place, so let me go with this: while this offense could certainly use some tweaks and no team, particularly a contender, simply rolls over the same basic roster from one season to the next, let’s not misunderstand a core truth here – this team is GOOD.
As a group, you can look at both team results and also go position by position. While it’s true that offence is down some from the year before in many cases, it is like that across the league (T …

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Author: Tammy Rainey / Blue Jays Nation

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