Leafs are screwed next summer when Matthews and Marner are up and half of the D will need new deals/replaced.

"We can, and we will"

Not going over with bonuses will help next year (need to keep below $74M or so this year for the $5M in bonuses), but Marleau and Kessel's $1.2M are going to be anchors.

Marleau is certainly not an anchor. Great 2 way player who still puts up the points and brings a ton of experience. We will sign all of our ufa’s With ease.

I wasn't referring to Marleau's on ice abilities. I was referring to a $6.25M cap hit for a 39 year old next summer when you need space to resign Matthews, Marner, and refill half of the D. They will not be resigning everyone "with ease", nothing even close to ease.

I don't see any issues at all. Hainsey and gardiner walk and we have plenty of defensmen in our system who will be ready to move up.

That's just not a realistic position.... but whatever makes you happy.

Just do the math... there are plenty of agm’s posted showing how simple the math works.

I’m just not sure if you think players will be paid more or you haven’t factored in cap raise and ltir.

We will exit this season with 5-6m in space. Add gardiner, hainsey and hortons salary. Then add the salary of the 4 rfa’s we need to sign (3.5m) then a modest cap increase of 2m.

You are left with 23m to sign Marner, Matthews, kappy and Johnson. I don’t see the difficulty there. There should be an answer soon as to how much we will be handing over to the big three. I’m thinking in the next few days there should be an announcement for all three.

If you think the big three will be making more than 26m thean that is where we disagree.

If their contracts come in high then there are plenty of mobile pieces on our team that we can move for healthy returns.

Simple...

I have some minor disputes about the bottom of the roster but all in all a good job without any silly premature defense trades.