2 months, sure. How about the last 3 years though? Campbell has been quite a bit better, and paying an extra 500k to keep him would have been way smarter.

Im not gonna say yes or no to it but at this point would anyone be surprised

Grubauer signs 5.9mill and becomes one of the worst goalies in the NHL after being top 3 in Vezina voting the year before

Campbell before going to Toronto was the same as Murray was in Pittsburgh 0.900sv

And then he plays 6 games in Toronto but its 6 games so k.

Second year plays 22 games puts up good numbers in what people called the easy division give you that

Murray goes to OTT and you could tell the fit was not there gets hurt Sens D wasnt great but not a great look

Year 3 Murray starts doing good then injury, Campell has 1 good month that carried his numbers then falls off hard and if it wasnt for October is not a 0.900 goalie and the only diff with Campbell was he played more games.

The whole thing with Murray is health and consistency. If he plays well and gets support can give you good results. If the team goes all you hes boned just like Campbell would have been.

Like if he played 45 games for OTT probs would have had a 0.915 sv which aint bad these days

Not a believer in Campbell, but Kuemper is a high end starter. His playoff struggles can almost wholly be attributed to an eye injury. I don’t think anyone can stop pucks when they can’t see lol. He was excellent in the final

The one thing with Kuemper I am concerned with is the eye

As there was a goalie who had a similar injury

Carter Hutton

Remember when he used to be good then he suffers the eye injury, goes to Buffalo and was never the same and to this day he talked about how the injury affected his vision despite treatment

Good thing hes Washington's problem in 2 days

But man if Kuemper's numbers drop losing Samsonov and Vanacek to keep him wont look good.

I am with you it’s 100% on the players at the end of the day to perform. But…

The bad
1. The Kadri trade
2. The Foligno trade
3. The Murray trade
4. The Rittich trade
5. The Johnsson trade
6. The Marleau trade

The good
1. The Muzzin trade
2. The Campbell trade
3. The McCann trade (but he f’d that up)
4. The Kapanen trade

He has done a great job at drafting for the most part and found some great value signings in Bunting, Kase, Mikheyev, Spezza, Boyd, and Galchunyuk. Did a great job of building the d-core but has done a terrible job a surrounding the main core with solid pieces that can complement them. The secondary core has been non existent and 😂 we are now on the 3rd starting goalie since he took over in 2018.

They are 1 year away till Matthews full NMC kicks in and I am just shocked he would tie his boat to Murray. Fukc it over pay for Kuemper or Campbell, deal with it later. I can’t see into the future, so maybe Murray comes in and plays incredible. But with his play, injury history, this is such a gamble.

I’ll believe it when I see it but he is so true to his guys (commendable but to a fault) but trading Kerfoot or Holl I don’t see happening. It’s looking very likely Sandin is on his way out and god help us on that potential trade. With 15m still owing on the final 2 years, and all they could squeeze was 25% retention, a 3rd and a 7th. The only two teams he would waive to was TOR or EDM 🤷‍♂️They wanted to get out of his contract, how could he not get more, at least get a 3rd team to retain.


I will look forward to see how he fills out the roster, but fukc this was a bad day.

Campbell has some question mark too, but at least he’s been good the past 2 years. If we want to play the what if game, Campbell was in the convo for the Vesina before he kinda got hurt and more just fell off a cliff. Don’t forget he had some good years with LA too. I trust him more than Murray at any rate.

I think Dubas should be cut a little bit of slack on the Kadri trade. Everybody knew he had to be traded after arguably costing the Leafs two playoff series in a row. And his first deal was to Calgary for Brodie, who is clearly an excellent fit, but that got nixed. And even if you didn’t think Barrie was the best fit, I doubt anybody predicted he would go from a 60-point defenseman to barely bottom pair calibre, and part of that was misuse by Babcock, who was far too set in his ways. The Marleau and Johnsson trades were cap casualties. The former is Lou’s fault, if Dubas hadn’t traded that 1st he woulda lost a more important player for below market value, and while he lost the Johnsson trade, at least Anderson might be a cheap contributor for the next two seasons, and again it’s better than moving a key piece (you could argue he won the combo of trading Kapanen+Johnsson for cap room). The Rittich trade was a mid-round pick for a rental goalie, he wasn’t great but he was never supposed to be more than a #3 not named Hutchinson so that’s not that bad. The Foligno trade was proper horrible though, I think he got tired of hearing how there was no grit and decided to prove that overpaying for grit/leadership isn’t how you win lol.

I think his three worst decisions are the Murray trade (although we should maybe see if Murray’s post-demotion pre-injury numbers weren’t a flash in the pan). the Foligno trade, and protecting Holl over Kerfoot/McCann. And yes I will acknowledge that the Murray trade is a huge risk and a lopsided deal in terms of Day 1 value, but it is slightly better than still not having a goalie in 3 days. Although I feel sorry for you if it goes poorly, because Dubas will be gone, the new guy will be some old fart that brings in a relic like Bowness and a 4th line grit grinder, the Leafs’s talent will finally push them to a playoff win and the fanbase will be jubilant until the fossil leads them into an extended stretch of mediocrity through Matthews’s prime. I feel like the second the Leafs win one round, they probably win three under Dubas.

The problem with “fukc it overpay for Kuemper or Campbell” is that if you lose out on them you’re more desperate (and I’d argue Campbell isn’t even an established starter still), and if you do get one you have zero money for necessary upgrades elsewhere. The fact that he’s found so many cheap guys like Bunting, Spezza, Giordano, etc. is crazy, and much better than any other GM’s track record as far as signings go. But being set up to be forced to have 5 of those guys in your top 9 is just doomed to failure, which is why it’s important to cut costs where possible (i.e. Murray) and hope for the best, so you can add at least 1, maybe 2 mid-cost (2-3mil) guys to the top 9. I would fully expect the Leafs to target guys like Milano, Steel, and Heinen. The flat cap definitely screwed the Leafs more than other teams, but in hindsight Dubas has done a much better job of handling it than several other GMs considering he has always had the worst starting position.

At the end of the day there’s no excuse for a team that got 115 points to not win at least a round or two, regardless of who they played. There’s no excuse for a team that steamrolled their division last year to not reach the conference final. There’s no excuse for them not to smoke a supremely less talented Blue Jackets team. And there’s really no excuse for choking back to back series against the Bruins (including a 3-2 series lead), even if they weren’t the favourite in one of them. Like Dubas set this team up to easily have won 4 playoff rounds by now, maybe more, and any less than that number is on the players.

I also don’t think you can fault him for being true to his guys, as unfortunate as that is. If the GM doesn’t believe in them, why should the fans? Or the players themselves? He’s banking on talent eventually breaking out, just like it did in Washington, and Tampa Bay, and Colorado despite years of crushing losses for those teams. The Leafs just have their crushing losses in round one instead of two lol.

The only thing that is giving me some solace at the moment is this image and IF they are able to add another 1B to play with him. But at 4.6 cap hit, without moving out salary, I can only see them rolling with Kallgren/Woll.



So yes, the Leafs set a franchise record in points/wins and were one goal away from beating Tampa in 6 with sub .900 goaltending last season.

Murray is owed $15M in real dollars over the next two years. A buyout saves the Sens $5M. And by the sounds of his medical record that wasn’t even possible. How the hell is an extra $6.25M in real money that they’re saving only worth a 3rd and a 7th. This trade would have made more sense to me at 50% retention because it allows the Leafs more flexibility in finding the other half of their goaltending tandem. With a 4.6 cap hit this really limits what kind of backup goalie they can add while also addressing the NEED for a top 6 LW and retooling the bottom six.

I’m hot and bothered lol but I will reserve my final judgement till I see how this roster shakes out

Final sentence is a more than fair take lol. I felt the same way when we traded for Murray 2 years ago (…that was supposed to be comforting, sorry).

At the end of the day I reckon it comes down to this. Husso is in Detroit. Vanecek is in NJD and Blackwood appears off the table. Kuemper looks lined up to go to Washington for half the salary cap, and Campbell appears set to be overpaid by Edmonton. That leaves the Leafs as the odd man out in this game of goalie musical chairs, and they either settle for a duo of 1Bs and backups (Reimer, Brossoit, Comrie, etc.) or a guy who may still have some actual starter upside, no matter how slight. And the cost for 25% retained Murray is probably a 3rd or more going the other way three days from now if the scenario above were to come to pass. So the comparison shouldn’t be 4.7mil Murray vs. whatever Campbell or Kuemper get, it should be 4.7mil Murray vs. a Reimer+Comrie combo. And I’ll leave that up to you to wrestle with lol, but my two cents is that Murray’s peaks are higher, while Reimer’s lows aren’t as catastrophic, so you decide which you’d rather have if you want to win a cup (which is the ultimate goal, as much as Leafs fans simply want to win a single series lol).

What is Ottawa planning to do with all that cap space?

1) Sign Klingberg?
2) Big Brother Tkachuk trade?
3) UFA Goalie splash (Campbell/Kuemper)?
4) something else...

That’s the thing, I could actually get behind the Murray trade if they got another team to retain, give them the 3rd + 7th if you have to. His 4.6 cap hit now really limits what they can do. If he was at a 2.6 cap hit that at least gives you the opportunity to get a Samsonov, Blackwood, Hill potentially. Now you basically can only have a 900k maybe 1.5 guy. Comrie? I don’t know.

It’s just ever since Kyle has been here we’ve talked about goaltending, now here we go again

To be fair with McCann he would be a pure rental as 5mill is not affordable

Leafs can afford a 2-2.5 mill goalie but Kerfoot and Holl are gone

So Reimer, Samsonov, Hill, Allen aren't out of the question.

McCann at 5mil is a better deal than Kerfoot+Holl at 5.5mil and I wouldn't say it's that close. I'd rather have a high end guy for 3C that can fill in at 2LW in a pinch than Kerfoot (who isn't great at C) and Kampf (ideally a shutdown 4C) playing a line above his head, even if he personally can handle it (because having that guy on line 4 is just so much better). With McCann as your 5th most expensive forward, you might be able to get away with having 4 cheap players in your top 9. Clearly with Kerfoot you can't.

DeBrincat was our big forward get, so I doubt we go after M. Tkachuk (and he's not exactly available anyway). A RD is probably the number one target right now. Klingberg is a possibility, but I suspect Seattle has a briefcase with 50+ million dollars in it and his name on it. Weegar, Marino, and Bear are solid trade options, or maybe even Carlo (and there have been Chychrun rumours too, who despite shooting left, has apparently played the right side). A UFA splash would also not be surprising, although it won't be in net, we're probably gonna run with Forsberg+Gustavsson to start and I don't hate that. If we get a goalie it will be a Comrie level guy at best, but I doubt we do, three goalies on one-way deals is super awkward. I think the UFA splash is most likely to be Giroux, and if that happens, Dorion's statue will start getting built the same day lol. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a depth guy (like a Marchment type) brought in on a shortish deal (maybe 3 years at 4mil AAV), or a trade for Puljujarvi, but this most likely happens only if we trade C. Brown for a RD (i.e. trade C. Brown half-retained + Brannstrom to Pittsburgh for Marino or something along those lines, and then either give Giroux 3x7mil or swap a 2nd to Edmonton for Puljujarvi). Apparently C. Brown for Puljujarvi might actually be a thing too, which I wouldn't hate, it's a temporary downgrade, but Puljujarvi is younger and cheaper and under team control for longer.

Not saying that but we could afford any of them beyond one season really wouldn't have mattered either way. As in the end they would be moved

I would dump Muzzin long before McCann, I don't care how many good locker room words he says lol

True but with all the good wings available and Dylan strome I feel you could divide the money if we go down that road

As imagine Strome 3 mill + Pitlick 1.75 mill that ain't bad

I'd still take McCann fairly easily. Neither of those guys drive play, are good defensively, and have a shot worth writing home about.

LA Kings might be a trade partner to pickup a RHD as well; they have a glut of quality ones and some open spots at LHD and maybe middle-6 forward needs as well.

I'd consider swapping Brannstrom+ for Roy or Durzi. Or maybe even straight up for Grans, although Brannstrom might have more value because he's proven to be an NHLer at minimum. That's probably a second tier option (along with Bear) though. I'd hope they thoroughly explore trading for a Weegar or Marino calibre player first.

lots of risk in the goalie market right now. what i dont understand is why toronto takes those picks from ottawa. why wouldnt you get a 3rd team involved and get another 50% retained. murray at $2.5m is an interesting gamble.

Husso’s about as much of a gamble as Murray lol, either you get a goalie who’s had 1 good year or you get a goalie who had a couple good years and won some cups albeit years ago and good luck affording someone like Kuemper/Campbell on the FA market. ( BTW Holtby may never play again, apparently he’ll be on LTIR so I guess you’d like to run Comrie and Kallgren for a full year which would be a disaster on so many levels )

He inherited the best leafs team ever constructed and did nothing with it you mean

Holtby is done? But he wouldn’t want to play in Toronto anyways. They would take his turtles.