Toronto Maple Leafs: Bad Contracts Preventing Leafs from Moving Forward

Quick, name the four players with the worst contracts on the Toronto Maple Leafs.

If you said Mike Komisarek, Tim Connolly, Matthew Lombardi and Colby Armstrong, you win the prize.

Until these four players are sent packing, the Leafs organization will not gain any significant ground in their quest for the Stanley Cup, regardless of what else they do to their roster.

The annual cap hits of the aforementioned players are, respectively: $4.5 million, $4.75 million, $3.5 million and $3 million.

That's $15.75 million in dead weight.

All of them have at least one year left on their respective contracts.

That's at least one more year that the NHL-ready kids in the system will have to wait for a full-time job with the Leafs.

You can sign and trade for all the stars you want, but your future stars will still be languishing in the minors while your useless veterans get paid too much to take up valuable roster space.

If you look at the young players within the Leafs organization, you'll see a number of them who are working hard and perhaps deserving of a full-time gig with the big club.

Youngsters like Nazem Kadri and Matt Frattin have bounced between the NHL and the AHL because of the bad contracts.

Other kids like Jesse Blacker, Joe Colborne and Carter Ashton may be denied a chance to play a meaningful amount of games at the NHL level during the 2012-13 season because of guys like Komisarek and Connolly.

The owners of the Leafs' four worst contracts are either 29 or 30 years old, meaning most of their best hockey is likely behind them.

And if what we've seen from Komisarek, et al. in the last year or two has been their best, there is no point in keeping any of them.

Leafs general manager Brian Burke must get rid of all four players immediately so that developing players like Kadri and Frattin can be inserted into the lineup for good.

One additional move that could push the Leafs over the top would be to bring in a guy like Paul Gaustad.

Connolly and Lombardi can both play centre, but neither of them can win faceoffs. They're also relatively soft players.

If the team brings in a tough, veteran centreman in Gaustad, they'll have four centremen (including Mikhail Grabovski, Tyler Bozak and David Steckel) who range from good to great in the faceoff department.

With the signing of Gaustad and the departure of Komisarek, et al., the Leafs' opening day lineup for the 2012-13 season would look something like this:

Joffrey Lupul - Tyler Bozak - Phil Kessel

Clarke MacArthur - Mikhail Grabovski - Nikolai Kulemin

Nazem Kadri - Paul Gaustad - Matt Frattin

Joey Crabb - David Steckel - Mike Brown

(Extra: Jay Rosehill)

Dion Phaneuf - Carl Gunnarsson

Luke Schenn - John-Michael Liles

Jake Gardiner - Cody Franson

(Extra: Korbinian Holzer or Jesse Blacker)

James Reimer

Jonas Gustavsson

Of course, the Leafs will draft a kid in June who might make the roster out of training camp, but we'll ignore it for the sake of this argument.

The lack of size, toughness and leadership will also need to be addressed over the summer, not to mention the goalie issue.

However, looking at the lineup above, you'll see that the overall quality of the team is actually much improved by dumping the four bad contracts, replacing those players with skilled youngsters and bringing in a veteran.

If it actually happened, it could turn out that getting a legitimate starting goaltender and a top-six forward with size weren't the organization's biggest needs after all.