Free agency sees Leafs wheel, deal on busy day
With Phil Kessel finally gone, it may only now be sinking in just how far away the Maple Leafs are from being contenders.
The Leafs traded Kessel to a Pittsburgh Penguins team that believes they are closer to the Stanley Cup with the enigmatic scorer than without.
Meanwhile, the Leafs have added a firstround pick in 2016 — they now have 12 picks next June — and a growing core of young players that might make the Marlies more interesting than the big club this coming season.
Defenceman Scott Harrington played10 games in the NHL last season and likely supplants Petter Granberg and Stuart Percy atop the defensive depth chart.
And 18-year-old Finn Kasperi Kapanen is just a hair behind William Nylander, 19, and a tad in front of Mitch Marner, 18; Connor Brown, 21; and Brendon Leipsic, 21, on the forward depth charts.
“This is really about a recognition on our part that the group we assembled here wasn’t good enough,” said Leafs president Brendan Shanahan.
“We are here to build a team that is capable of winning a Stanley Cup. There are no shortcuts.
“We’ve created a lot of cap space to give us flexibility going forward. It’s our job to turn picks into prospects and prospects into productive Leafs. That will take time.”
Kessel was almost gleefully paraded out of town by his detractors, with Shanahan calling him the most talented player in a group that just wasn’t going to get better, so it was time to move on.
Kessel was greeted in Pittsburgh as a talented scorer, along the lines of Alex Ovechkin, the kind of player Sidney Crosby has lacked as a teammate. Kessel can slide in behind Crosby, score some goals on the wing and probably help the Penguins make the playoffs regularly while comfortably standing quietly to the side and out of the spotlight.
“I believe in getting a fresh start, getting out Toronto, getting out from the microscope,” said Penguins GM Jim Rutherford. “He was always the guy that was blamed when things weren’t going well. He doesn’t have to be the guy here. We have bunch of them.”
The Penguins certainly got the better player. The best the Leafs can hope for is to continue to lay the foundation for a better future.
“This will be certainly a shock to a lot of players and a message to our group,” said Shanahan. “With Mike Babcock getting hired, and what he will bring to that group every day, we’re going to see what kind of people can either keep up or be left behind.”
Leadership of the Leafs will shortly belong to Morgan Rielly, James van Riemsdyk and Nazem Kadri for now while the other top prospects percolate for a season or two.
The message to the remaining core players — captain Dion Phaneuf, centre Tyler Bozak, winger Joffrey Lupul — shape up or ship out.
“I don’t think they should be nervous,” said Dubas. “They should be ready to come into training camp ready to go and help our team be the best that we can. Babcock has hammered that message home with them repeatedly.
“We’re going to have huge expectations on their conditioning and their fitness when they come into camp.”
As much as July 1 was traditionally about league-wide free-agency, the Leafs hijacked the day with the Kessel trade.
The deal was worked on at the draft. But given Kessel was due a $4-million bonus July 1, it was decided to hold off so deep-pocketed Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment could pay that. The Leafs were also forced to retain $1.2 million annually of Kessel’s salary when two players who were to come to the Leafs in Penguin salary dumps — Chris Kunitz and Rob Scuderi — declined to waive their no-trade clauses.
The Leafs also sent prospect forward Tyler Biggs and defenceman Tim Erixon to Pittsburgh in the trade.
The Leafs certainly plugged some holes in free agency on Wednesday:
Popular forward Daniel Winnik returned to the fold, signing a two-year deal and will help the team with his forechecking ability. He had been traded to Pittsburgh for a secondround pick. That pick went back to Pittsburgh in the Kessel deal.
Defenceman Matt Hunwick should have a useful role, while veteran winger P.A. Parenteau may replace Kessel on the top line and the versatile Mark Arcabello fits in with the bottom six.
But the trade was all about the future.
“Everyone sees the Penguins getting Phil,” said Dubas. “It’s not as exciting for Leaf fans today as it is for Penguins fans.
“I’m excited about the year and adding the players we did today, even thought they might not be sexy names, but they’re players that are effective players that are going to play the way we want to play and help us.”
The Leafs have 12 picks in the 2016 draft, five in the first three rounds. They have each of their own plus Pittsburgh’s first-rounder, New Jersey’s third-rounder, Anaheim’s fifthrounder, St. Louis’s sixth-rounder and Tampa’s seventh-rounder. The Pittsburgh and Tampa picks are conditional. If the Penguins don’t make the playoffs in 2016, that first-rounder slides to 2017.