The Leafs Swing...and Miss

Give the Toronto Maple Leafs credit…at least they tried.

It would have been easy to sit back and do little-to-nothing today, hold a press conference on July 4^th and say how the money being spent on day one of the free agency period was insane and you needed to be fiscally responsible for the future.  But the Leafs didn’t do that.  They took their best swing at the free agent market.  Did they hit a home run? 

Probably not.

Jeff Finger, a 28 year old defensemen with only one full NHL season under his belt, hit the jackpot today, signing a 4-year, $14 million dollar contract.  From the Leafs prospective, you have to overpay somewhat every July 1 to get the guys that you want.  Even knowing that however, how do you offer more than $12 million for Finger?  Was he seriously being offered $13 million+ by another team?  I find that hard to believe.  Finger will likely do well with Toronto.  He should have some more upside (though not a ton, let’s keep in mind that he’s already 28 years old), and he should be steadier than Bryan McCabe and (if he’s not traded tomorrow) Pavel Kubina.  However, Trader Cliff definitely overpaid for Finger, especially when he could have gotten a better – or at least a higher upside – defenseman in ex-Sabres rearguard Dimitri Kalinin.

Niklas Hagman, a 28 year old left winger, is an interesting signing.  He can play in the top-6, or he can be a speedy grinder on a checking line.  I’d love to see him end up on a hybrid 2^nd/3^rdline with Matt Stajan and Jamal Mayers, a line that can score at times and shut down opposing players at other times.  Detroit has done incredibly well for themselves with such lines.  The difference between Detroit and Toronto however, is that when it pays Kris Draper a whole $1,583,333, it’s paying a former Selke Award-winning pivot who’s the best in the game at what he does.  $3 million dollars for a guy who was a 3^rd/4^th line player for years until having a couple of hot streaks this year surrounded by large offensive slumps is more than a bit of a stretch.

Now then, we have saved the best for last.  CuJo is coming home!  I was never a Joseph hater, never blamed him for our playoff woes.  You can only work with what you have in front of you, and CuJo did more with it than most anyone else could have at the time.  And now he comes home to finish his career, and help teach Vesa Toskala how to be a consistently great goaltender.  If anything, he’ll be underpaid at $700,000 for this season.

If I were to grade the Leafs on their first day of free agency, I’d have to give them a C-.  They signed good players, but they vastly overpaid the two main ones, which will hurt them in other ways both this year and in the years to come.  The salary cap will only climb so far, and it’s a shame that GM’s don’t yet realize that.