With the obvious caveat that we shouldn’t read too much into preseason game results, this training camp for the Leafs has been interesting in a few ways. Toronto had significant roster turnover in the summer, and with these new faces like Spezza, Barrie, Kerfoot, and Ceci, there was a lot to take in about how…
The Leafs are going to do a few things differently this season, so you can go ahead and make peace with that. The roster has had its fair share of turnover, but tactically we can expect to see some new things as well. Out are assistant coaches DJ Smith and Jim Hiller, in are Paul…
Yesterday Katya Knappe at Pension Plan Puppets published a very good piece about the Marner situation that does exactly as its title says: Blows away the smoke, and shows that his choice is actually quite simple. The basic premise is that, as the Leafs get closer to opening night on October 2nd, the way they’ve…
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The negotiations between Marner and the Leafs are still at a point where the sides are not close, and the insistence from Marner’s agent that he is paid as much as Auston Matthews is causing the Leafs to delay naming their captain, according to multiple reports. Making the radio rounds…
For those who might be unfamiliar with the story, here is a quick rundown of how the Leafs came to put together their analytics department when Kyle Dubas was hired in 2014: In that summer, Toronto hired Cam Charron (then-editor of this very website), Rob Pettapiece, and Darryl Metcalfe to create a small group of…
The restricted free agent dominoes haven’t quite started to fall just yet, but with the signing of Blue Jackets’ defenceman Zach Werenski this morning, the talk of comparable value is sure to take off again for the next couple days, especially with training camps opening this week. Given Werenski is a blue-liner, his signing doesn’t…
It’s been somewhat widely reported for a while now that if Mitch Marner can’t come to an agreement with the Leafs soon he’s going to head overseas to suit up for another team. In the case of Marner’s agent Darren Ferris, this has been a pretty classic scheme from his playbook, with him going down…
For the five billionth time, let’s start things off by getting this out of the way: It’s September and a huge list of high-profile restricted free agents have not signed new deals, Mitch Marner included. It’s a somewhat unprecedented situation, this whole thing. And we keep saying it looks like a change in the way…
Auston Matthews has, oddly, never worn the captain’s sweater for any team he’s played on. He’s been so good for so much of his young career that the opportunity never arose, as he’s constantly played for teams with players a couple years older than him mostly making up the roster. But none of that supposed…
There’s no other way to put it: The Jake Gardiner situation is a weird one. The (maybe former) Leafs’ defenceman, coming off a season that was derailed a bit by injury but still impressive hasn’t signed a contract as an unrestricted free agent. He’s just… sitting there. But why? There have been some who’ve pointed…
If you pay enough attention to a lot of contract negotiations, you can see patterns emerge pretty quickly with how agents go about their business, particularly in negotiating through the media. To this point in the summer we’ve already been given a masterclass from Mitch Marner’s “camp” in this regard, with agent Darren Ferris going…
In less than five weeks the Leafs will fly out to the best part of the world to get their training camp started in St. John’s, a beautiful city in Newfoundland. Leading up to that, we can expect the release of a pretty inflated list of invites who’ll be making the journey and trying to…
