Movers and Shakers: The Shanaplan for the Draft

Photo Credit: Tom Szczerbowski/USA TODAY Sports

It’s just over 24 hours until the start of the draft, and still the NHL hasn’t topped the excitement of the McKegg for Hyman trade this week. Not overly surprising as it seems to be tradition to have everything go down the day of the draft in hopes it causes every other team to scramble to react. What really ends up happening is that one big trade you thought would lead to a zillion others winds up being the big trade of the weekend and other than that a few teams are just gonna shuffle the order of the draft. 

That’s why it’s not overly surprising when Brendan Shanahan spoke today it was less than exciting, and purposely designed to remind us that nothing is etched in stone, and nothing is imminent. Of course you can take what he said a number of different ways, and that’s what we’ll do.

Yeah, no kidding you’re getting a bunch of trade calls the day before the draft. Thanks for the nothing statement. While the no rush part is comforting, and makes me feel all options will be exhausted, the no deadline isn’t necessarily true. There has been plenty of talk about the Leafs wanting additional picks in the top sixty, and that deadline is Saturday. If you are saying there’s no deadline on specific players, that’s good, as any player who is paid a bonus on July 1st might become a better trade target for cash strapped teams, and after the small list of somewhat decent UFAs are gone, it might become a better time for the Leafs to deal.

From our point of view it only goes two places, we have an exciting day of trades and debate or the Leafs draft two very good players at the spots they are presently assigned and we appreciate having better prospects than we did yesterday.

Not at all surprising the best Leafs player has garnered the most interest, but “how could this be?” you ask, “Bill Watters assured me no one would take that contract.” Coming off a season where every team in the league believes they need to add more offence it’s not surprising that there’s interest in Kessel. It’s an unfortunate reality that teams manage their money so poorly that it’s insanely difficult to make a straight forward trade for him.

While we all have Leafs players we want to see dealt, this is a very good point. Mike Babcock by even the lowest expectations of him should be able to help the Leafs improve on their dismal 2014-15 season, and as a result it’s likely that several of these players will see their stock increase. There’s a silver lining in everything.

This isn’t a bad thing. In fact it’s a pretty freakin’ great thing.

All these responses can simply translate into a message to 29 teams around the league, and that message is fairly simply, “IMPROVE YOUR DAMN OFFERS.”

It’s not fair to take you through a full Shanahan post and not leave you with a single idea of what the Leafs are trying to do, so here you go…

Now whether that means the Leafs are acquiring multiple 2nd round picks, or a 2nd and a player I don’t know, but I assume there’s more to it than the Leafs offering someone the chance to pick earlier out of the goodness of their hearts. Or they have Cliff Fletcher taking trade calls.

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