I guess I would take exciting suck over boring dead suck. 
- AdamFrench
I mean it's more of a useless article - how do fans
feel about their franchise? It doesn't reflect on the value or reality. What we feel as fans is often stupid and pointless.
There's a significant portion of sports fans who fail to objectively view anything.
The Leafs are low because every year they are Charlie Brown kicking a football. This is the year that Lucy's going to hold the ball! But after a while everyone, including Charlie Brown, is in on the joke. It's hard to have much faith.
If you do - and I think Dom does it every year and may have done it recently - look at the actual value provided by each player for their contract and also keep in mind that Dom undervalues contracts so it easier to outperform your contract if you're an elite performer . . . the Leafs have a significant number of players who perform to or outperform their contracts. In this upcoming season I don't think Nylander lives up to his and we know Tavares can't.
So on the Leafs for 2024-24 - where is the waste likely to be? Tavares, Kampf, Reaves, Ekman-Larsson and Liljegren. Nylander, I suspect, doesn't live up to the $11.5m deal - but he's in his prime and if he remains in the top-20 in points and goals, he'll be close enough to a fair contract. JT is probably $4-5m off of his value, Kampf is probably only about $800k, Reaves $600k.
To me OEL is a challenge because he adds puck movement from the back end and a shot from the back end that we need, but he adds soft defensive coverage which we already have in spades. I feel at $2.5m he was more fairly priced - but he was likely always going to exceed that in the open market.
Liljegren at $3m seems egregious. I didn't think his play really warranted much of a raise at all - but the underlying numbers suggest he was fairly strong in a top-4 role most of the time with McCabe. All I can say is that to me $3m
feels like it's $1m too much. But what I do know? What I feel is stupid and pointless.
