Team: 2019-20 Toronto Maple Leafs

Initial Creation Date: Jul. 3, 2019

Published: Jul. 3, 2019

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Trade Ceci, use that $4.5m to offer Gardiner a 1 year deal. Gardiner had a down year and dealt with injuries. Maybe he may want a one year deal to earn a bigger payday.

Also, the Marner deal is very fair after seeing what Aho took. Gotta wonder how many RFAs are pissed off at Aho for taking that deal, as it basically guarantees every one of them other than Marner, Point and Rantanen are making less than $8.5 on a 5 year deal.

I confess to not entirely understand how LTIR work, but as far as I understand, the leafs can place both Hyman and Dermott on LTIR as both are expected to miss the first 24 days and 10 games of season. Obviously, once Hyman is ready to go some roster moves will need to be made. So you are using training camp and the first month of the season as a tryout for Mikheyev, Spezza, Shore, Bracco, Gautheir, etc. Once Dermott is healthy, it wont make much difference as his AAV is similar to those he is replacing. One potential way of accomodating for Hyman coming off LTIR is to not carry 3 scratches. When your AHL affiliate is in the same city why do you need to carry 3 scratches, 1 or 2 is just fine and an easy way to save you 700k to 1.5m.

I would also be open to the idea of bringing up Liljegren a month or two into the season if he's ready.

That being said this is how my line-up would look with everyone healthy:
Johnsson - Matthews - Nylander
Hyman - Tavares - Marner
Moore - Kerfoot - Kapanen
Mikheyev- Spezza - Bracco

Reilly - Barrie
Muzzin - Gardiner
Dermott - Liljegren

Andersen
Hutchinson

Scratch: Petan, Holl