Mailbag: Home Sweet Home

At about 5:45 AM this morning, the wheels touched down on a plane headed from Vancouver to Toronto. Out of that plane, came a tired individual who many believe should shut up. Yes, I’m back at home as of this morning, and yes, you’ll get your silence soon; I think I’m going to take a bit of time off in the near future. But for now, there’s a bunch of questions in my inbox that people appear to want answered, so lets have at it.

This is a tricky one for me to answer. After all, I don’t own Nations Network, and I don’t oversee it. Heck, I don’t even oversee TLN; Steve is our managing editor. My role on here is “dude who writes a lot”. But I’ve been involved in web development and marketing for the bulk of the past nine years, and can probably safely that the answer is “to the top”. 

Ultimately, I think the blogosphere wants to see everybody put out great content, get noticed, and achieve all their goals. There’s no hostility, because we’re all in this together. But in the mean time, it’s also a business, and we’d be kidding ourselves if we said we didn’t want to be the primary source of the general population’s Leafs content, both in our output and their readership.

How that process goes, I don’t know for sure, nor will I speculate in. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for him. The Leafs have amassed a bunch of bottom six wingers, and Hartikainen is still committed to Salavat Yulaev Ufa for another year. I have to imagine there’s more money available to him as a top line winger in the KHL than there is as someone who is seen as a borderline NHL player. He suits that style of game, and I don’t expect him to jump until he can guarantee NHL minutes. That won’t come until the Leafs no longer have his rights.

Your imagination isn’t a source. Also, why would the Leafs give all that up for a second line centre to play behind Tyler Bozak?

I don’t like the sound of it. Not because I feel that he would be incapable, but more because the lack of games and little opportunity in the ones he plays will likely stunt his development. Granberg is pretty raw still, so that concept seems counter-intuitive.

On one hand, Reimer would probably get more games than a traditional backup behind Marc-Andre Fleury, would likely perform better, and would likely improve the team. in this respect, it’s not the craziest thought. On the other hand, the Penguins have $6 million in remaining cap space, 19 signed skaters, and two (Sutter, Spaling) RFA’s to deal with. 

They also just signed Thomas Greiss, a very capable backup in his own right, three weeks ago. So, probably not.