Quoting: Ritzy
They're already going to have a hard enough time shedding the 2-3M in cap after Murray is LTIR'ed or traded, why make that problem worse to have Sammy for one more year when you can sign him to what he's looking for with all the cap space in the world next season?
Sammy missed some time this past season with a knee injury as well.
There's maybe a handful of teams in this league that are solidified with their goaltending night in and night out. I'm not ready to call Woll a starter yet either, but now is a great time to get him some more starts and see where you are at. Maybe he seizes the opportunity and you can look for a couple of veteran cheap goaltenders next season rather than 4.5-5M for Sammy.
Why make it harder? Well that’s on Treliving for making this mess and putting TOR so far over the cap that IMO the only realistic way of getting out of this is moving Nylander (weakens the FWD depth) or Brodie (weakens the defensive depth). But that’s a whole different argument.
You are right. There is only a handful of teams that have solidified there goaltending night in night out. I wouldn’t want to commit big money on a long-term deal to any goalie unless they were named Vasilevskiy, Shesterkin, Sorokin, Saros, and Oettinger.
Which leads us to I am not even comfortable at all giving Samsonov a large long term deal next season (4/5x5+) Something he most likely will command especially considering it’s basically him and Hellebuyck as the only realistic FA options next year. The market next year is pretty much garbage.
Treliving had an great opportunity to get a potential top 10 goalie on a 2-3 year at a modest cap hit (yes I consider anything under 5 million for an NHL starter modest) to run in tandem with Woll for the next couple of seasons. That would have been perfect.
Instead we get to hope Woll is that guy and find another cheap reclamation project to pair with him.
I guess I’m just higher on Samsonov than most Leaf fans. I personally don’t see him regressing next year, on the contrary, I believe he will solidify himself as a top 10 goalie and get paid accordingly.
Or maybe I’m full of **** and Samsonov regresses next season as a full-time No. 1 and the Leafs decide to move in a different direction.
Time will tell.
And for a goalie who had a knee injury in November and missed 12 games, he certainly didn’t let it effect his play coming back.