Former Leafs Fantasy Roster

11 years ago

The One That Got Away

Yesterday over at PPP I posted my "Salary Cap Fantasy Team". While I won’t get into the nitty gritty the idea was to build a team that was 1. Cap Compliant and 2. Made up of players from all over the league and over as many drafts as possible. I felt I had a strong entry, you can see it here. But I also found that you could probably make up an entire roster of nothing but former Leafs. I decided to do just that.

The Leafs roster has seen an insane amount of turnover the past few years. Former players are littered throughout the NHL, AHL, KHL, SEL, and wherever Vesa Toskala is currently. I wanted to build a roster of nothing but former Leafs. Plenty of people are always bemoaning the fact that the Leafs let this or that player go and that they’d be better off with them still on the team. So I fired up the old Fantasy Calculator over at Cap Geek and went to town.

My Parameters:

Player must have played at least one game for the Leafs.

Full 23 Man Roster must be used.

Team must be cap compliant.

Presenting Gord Stellick’s Dream Team

Forwards:

Ponikarovsky-Antropov-Boyes
Stalberg-Steen-Versteeg
Blake-Stajan-Stempniak
Hagman-Moore-Tlusty
Mitchell
Wellwood

Defense:

Kaberle-Beauchemin
White-Gill
Colaiacovo-Stralman
Aulie

Goalies:

Gigeure
Clemmenson

Some Thoughts:

Holy hell do I have a lot of cap space. Although plenty of those guys are on expiring deals.
While there are some forwards I would like to have back- Steen, Versteeg, Stalberg, Boyes, hell even Tlusty seems to have played well for the Hurricanes- no one jumps out at me as "one that got away". None of those guys are game breakers, and most of them are past their prime. I’m not losing any sleep over these guys.
If I did it again I’d probably swap Aulie for Kubina, mostly because Aulie is terrible, but I forgot about Kubina until right now.
Most depressing is the goaltending. While I wouldn’t want to rely on that duo long-term they would have given the Leafs better goaltending than they received this past season.
Is this a good team? No. Do I wish we had some of these players still, sort of. Is it so good that we should freak out everytime a former Leafs contributes elsewhere in the NHL? Absolutely not. I mean, good for Anton Stralman and everything but he’s not the missing piece of the puzzle.

Do you think I missed anyone? Think you can make a better one? Who should coach? Let me know in the comments.