Fourth liners, buyout fever, and here’s a PoHO: Leaflets

Somewhat mercifully there are just 16 games remaining in the Maple Leafs season and perhaps even more mercifully there only seven remaining at home. As the Maple Leafs season winds down and Leafs fans bounce back and forth between being excited about the draft lottery odds and concerned about the quality of draft pick the team could be handing over to the Bruins, here are a few distracting thoughts to get through the days.

The fourth line of the future: today

The arrival of Benoit-Olivier Groulx and Michael Pezzetta on the Maple Leafs roster is an unexciting but encouraging development. Neither of these players have upsides that should lead anyone to believe they will move the bar on the Maple Leafs but the impact of their cap hits might.

Shifting away from expensive fourth line options is encouraging for the Maple Leafs. Too much has been spent on Calle Jarnkrok, David Kampf, Scott Laughton, Nicolas Roy, Ryan Reaves, Dakota Joshua, and all the options that came before them. At times they were third line capable or projected to work out that way, but more times than not they found themselves being expensive versions of fourth liners. After this season, Dakota Joshua is the last one to remain, unless you find Steven Lorentz’ contract excessive.

The idea of a Lorentz-Groulx-Pezzetta fourth line shouldn’t excite Leafs fans for what they can do, but for the fact that it likely results in a couple of million dollars that can be spent upwards in the lineup as well as it commits to an energy line model that requires players to deliver consistently because they can just as easily be replaced by the next batch of energy players pushing their way up from the Marlies. A commitment to affordability on the fourth line means that money can be spent in the top nine, in goal, and on the blueline, all areas that need to be prioritized ahead of organizational depth.

There is also something to be said for what would be brought on ice as well. Players who are comfortable taking a hit to make a play, players with enough speed that can arrive in time for their hits to be effective, and while someone like Pezzetta might not have anything to offer the penalty kill, players like Lorentz and Groulx could be potential assets in that regard as well, if given the chance and giving them the opportunity to play in the Leafs lineup now, together gets them there.

A player like Jarnkrok, who is almost certainly not a Maple Leaf by July 1st, doesn’t need a spot in the Leafs lineup every night and if the Leafs are going to play him there are opportunities better deploy him as a defensively responsible option on the second or third lines anyway. And while prioritizing fixing the fourth line seems odd, it is something that can be reasonably looked at and addressed right now given that primary options of Joshua, Lorentz, Groulx, and Pezzetta are all under contract for next season and Jacob Quillan is a restricted free agent.

Joshua might be the complication to that situation but given that he’s already on the Leafs and it might not be likely that his contract is going anywhere, he too needs to be explored as a potential fix for this group, if not the option below needs to factor into the Leafs plans for his future.

Ending the stigma of buying out players

One of the perks of the rising salary cap and having a locked in number at least for the short term is that buyouts seem possible regardless of how a contract is structured and instead teams can legitimately look at if a player is someone they want to continue to move forward with in the coming season.

Max Domi is a prime example of that. Domi is not a bad player and his results aren’t terrible. Honestly his $3.75M AAV cap hit isn’t even as bad as it seemed a year ago. That said, Domi doesn’t really fit with any need for the Maple Leafs and it is probably time to move on.

In the past,  $2.75M of dead cap space for the next two seasons, plus two years of $500k dead cap space to follow would be an ugly look for the Maple Leafs, but now the uglier look might be continue to try and get consistent hockey out of Max Domi in the top nine forward group and taking up a potential spot to upgrade.

The same is also true of Dakota Joshua’s contract. Joshua doesn’t seem like a fit for the Maple Leafs and perhaps two years of $1.33M cap hits followed by a couple more seasons of $708k cap hits might be the better way forward for both the organization and the player. Joshua’s buyout might even be preferrable to retaining salary on a trade, which isn’t necessarily true of Max Domi.

Buyouts are never the first or ideal course of action, but if trades don’t materialize (Domi and Joshua both have some form of no trade list), or trade with salary retention aren’t possible, and the idea of burying the player in the minors isn’t particularly appealing, the buyout might be the better idea than using the player in the lineup.

If the Coach and General Manager can’t make a case for a player fitting into the lineup as a Plan A or Plan B option, by Plan C it is probably worth moving on from them, and while one season might not be enough to say that conclusively about Dakota Joshua for some, Max Domi, while a decent enough player, doesn’t look like a fit for the Maple Leafs at all.

Here’s a guy (President of Hockey Operations edition)

The other day, I wrote about whether the Maple Leafs should be hiring a President of Hockey Operations, but I chickened out when it came to giving some names that make sense for the Maple Leafs. There are some reasons for that, not being familiar with who is available or interested is part of it and not knowing who is a personality fit for Keith Pelley is another (and that will matter). It feels like this would be an exercise in listing off former players, GMs, and NHL personalities and ignoring the very real potential of someone from the business world getting consideration, although I’m not convinced that is the best idea.

Despite that, I feel like I need to put a couple of ideas out there and the first is to look at Steve Simmons’ suggestion that Chris Pronger is worthwhile candidate. I don’t really agree, but I also won’t dismiss that idea that Pronger is a very real candidate for the job rather than me pulling names from the ether.

Pronger seems to have a genuine interest in the business side of sports and has won at the NHL level, that’s going to carry some weight with Keith Pelley and the MLSE board. He seems very much like a Brendan Shanahan redux, but NHL winner with post playing career ambitions might be end of the similarities and Prongers philosophy around team building might be radically different.

Shanahan came to the Leafs with a lot more NHL front office experience than Pronger has but he does have some experience in the Panthers organization and runs his own business so he’s not coming in completely blind.

In contrast to Chris Pronger, my suggestion would be Joe Nieuwendyk, assuming he has any remote interest in the role. He has some limited GM experience and one time held big aspirations for Hockey Ops but that may have disappeared over the past decade.

As a former Leaf there feels like a better comfort fit for the organization and arguably being tethered to Brett Hull during Nieuwendyk’s time in Dallas might have hurt Joe’s reputation as a manager as well as being brought up in Brian Burke’s front office for the Leafs.

Finally, I’d just like to say the generic idea of looking at players agents holds appeal to me. Pat Brisson walking in the door and taking charge has appeal but again have no idea if this is something he specifically would ever want. The same can be said about Claude Lemieux, which makes me feel greasy to suggest given my opinion of him as a player, but high profile agents in general are interesting given they are strong negotiators, have an advanced understanding of the money side of things, and are very in tune to what drives players.

There isn’t a surefire fit out there but whomever the job goes to better show up with a plan for day one and not need to burn a year on seeing things with their own eyes.

PRESENTED BY SUNWING VACATIONS