The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t lose in the playoffs this year because of Mitch Marner, despite what a million angry Leafs Fans will tell you.
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost because their GM made the horrendous decision not to trade for a goalie mid-season.
Instead of making the trade pretty much everyone knew he needed to make, Brad Treliving entered the playoffs will Ilya Samsonov, a goalie who went unclaimed on waivers less than three months before the playoffs.
It proved to be the Leafs undoing, as Samsonov was not good and lost the net to Joseph Woll. Unfortunately, Woll is incredibly injury prone and was predictably unable to go in game seven, so the net reverted back to Samsonov and the Leafs lost in overtime on a very savable shot.
In addition to needing a goalie, the Leafs also have the problem of Auston Matthew’s Prime.
The Prime of the Best Player in Franchise History cannot be approached lightly. You don’t get many kicks at this can. The Leafs know this, and that rules out any chance or the Leafs going with a Joseph Woll + Decent Back-Up tandem.
Woll might yet be an amazing starting goalie, but he’s only played 39 career NHL games and seems to be constantly injured. Unfortunately, it is too risky to go with him and someone like Laurent Brossoit, no matter what the rumorus say.
The Leafs recent history and the age of their best player leaves them little choice but to pursue a star goalie.
The Leafs have tried many things over the Auston Matthews Era, but one thing they haven’t done is put Matthews and Marner with a top goalie.
Therefore, expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to pursue an elite goalie this summer, likely in the next week. (much of this info from capfriendly.com).
The Nashville Predators have one of the top goalie prospects in the NHL, Yaroslav Askarov and Saros is 29 and on an expiring contract.
That contract has a cheap $5 million cap-hit, but comes with the expectation of a $10 million-ish extention at the end of next season.
If the Leafs were to trade for Saros, the idea would be to extend him with the money that comes off the books next season when John Tavares contract expires.
For one season, the Leafs would have a Woll/Saros combo for a very cheap $6 million cap-hit.
The reason to trade for Saros is that goalies in the NHL are extremely unpredictable from year to year, and therefore anyone who can spend several years as one of the best goalies in the league becomes an extremely rare commodity.
In the NHL, the best goalies right now are Connor Hellebuyck and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Neither is available to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
After that, the list gets subjective, but Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin, Joel Oettinger and Jusse Saros are the four players in teir 2.
After that, things get pretty blurry, but you’ve got Jacob Markstrom, Thatcher Demko, Jordan Binnington, John Gibson, Fred Andersen and then Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark (though they are a tandem pair and who knows what you’d get with just one of them).
Jusse Saros is the closest thing the Leafs can get to a top goalie and should be their top priority.
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