I like it. They are definitely are a contender but I would tru to upgrade my 3C using a guy like brown. However those are expensive bridge deals. I’m thinking more along the lines of 8-9M for Matthews and 7-8 for marner.

I think this is what both the marner and matthews contracts should look like if dubas hadn’t overpaid

I don't mind the Matthews deal (2 years too short, but good otherwise) But I think they should have just traded Marner before him signing a contract. He had probably the best value at that point

Really need an upgrade to 3C. I love brown and was sad to seem him go, but on this team he is still 4th line and for the leafs (not every team), that is to rich for them. The extra money would be better spent to upgrade 3C and have a < 1M contract on the 4th line.

I doubt the Nashville deal happens because their plan all along was to dump Subban for Duchene, who made it very clear that’s where he wanted to go. When you have a top 6 C say he’s signing with you as a UFA and you already have one top 6 C and two or three guys that can be a bottom six 6, you don’t trade a 1RD for another middle six C, especially when you had to trade another top 4 RD already (you can’t make a rookie your 1RD no matter how good he’ll be eventually). Also the Zaitsev deal doesn’t happen without Brown/Ceci that was kinda the point (the Sens really wanted Brown especially). Without Ellis this team is basically the same one that just got smacked by Columbus. I’m really not sure this team would win more than the qualifying round, maybe one round. I can’t see them pulling out the dub against more than one or two of the likes of CBJ, TBL, BOS, NYI, PHI, etc. those teams are just deeper and better coached. You can’t rely on your bottom six here, Kapanen and Mikheyev can play a bit but Spezza’s a 4th liner at this point in his career and that 4th line is nowhere near as effective as the NYI, TBL, or BOS 4th lines at creating energy and being physical/trustworthy for a few minutes per night. Also like others have pointed out those are not bridge deals. Matthews bridge is 9, Marner bridge is like 6.5-7 (9 is like 500k short of what Marner deserved on an 8 year deal tbh).