Ah the old "any 4th liner from any basement dwelling team is as good as a middle 6 forward on the leafs" mentality eh? No Gregor is not a replacement for Jarnkrok. He's an AHLer. Same as Benoit. You can always count on someone building statues for nobodies.

Whether you like it or not, the Leafs have a cap issue and it is going to hurt to fix it.
Leafs are limited as to who can move, and many of the players that can be moved don't have enough cap hit to make a difference.
Gregor is a downgrade from Jarnkrok, but he plays a physical game and had a history of scoring in junior. Leafs are going to have to clear cap soon and take a chance on someone.
Its either Jarnkrok or Brodie, maybe even both.

You can’t simply waive Jarnkrok away 🤷🏻 ( this isn’t Harry Potter). He’d have to be claimed or significant portion of his salary would still count against cap. Leafs - like a lot of teams - are facing cap issues. But they can run a 20 man roster and be 100% compliant. Dumping valuable players and replacing them with worse players hardly seems like a recipe for success to me

Why? They can run an 11/7 lineup and be compliant. When someone gets hurt, you get an emergency call up. The only time you don't is if a player gets hurt in warmups or the day of the game. If someone is hurt longer than 10 games they go on LTIR and you have more flexibility.

So why does TO "have" to throw away Brodie or Jarnkrok so we can run worse players and have guys sitting in the press box?

Gregor is not "not that much of a downgrade", or in other words he IS that much of a downgrade

Offense
Jarnkrok:
10 or more goals every year since 2015/2016 and a career high 20 last year
Career high 39 pts last year and averages about half a point per game
Averaged over an 82 game season, he scores 16 goals and 36 pts

Gregor
26 goals total in his career of 178 games, career high 10 last year
Career high 23 points 2 years ago, 17 last year maybe 0.3 ppg
Averaged over an 82 game season, he scores 12 goals and 23 pts

Other:
Jarnkrok
Can play C (did so mostly early in his career, not much recently)
Is still quite good in the dot
Is good defensively (not elite, but good, can be the responsible guy on a sheltered scoring line)
Is not particularly physical

Gregor
cannot play C
Is terrible defensively
Is physical


So essentially Gregor is exactly what you would expect from a 25 year old signing a PTO in September: he is a borderline NHLer. He comes with one improvement over Jarnkrok (Gregor is more physical). Otherwise he is significantly worse in every way. Jarnkrok is frankly a bargain. He is middle six forward who can complement skilled players and score when in that situation (but can't drive his own offense), and can play all three forward positions and be defensively responsible. He can be put anywhere in the line up and be useful. He does that for 2.1 million.

I will be quite upset if they go 11/7. That is a terrible solution and I would put Treliving on mighty thin ice, as he put himself in this spot.

Why? We did this last season and it very quickly sorted itself out. It truly is astounding to me how many people in this world go about their days forgetting about yesterday and acting like there is no tomorrow. I appreciate living in the now but you won't know where you are going without knowing where you came from and you certainly aren't going to get far if you have no plans for tomorrow.

I think its def a possible scenario and it does allow for Robertson to go to the Marlies vs check Tik Tok etc in the press box...they will lose some guys to waivers
AND
Although I am not a Jarnkrok fan he did get 20...thats not bad for a decent 2 way guy at a reasonable AAV...Nashville have not but one guy who got 20 last year on the roster...maybe they give up a 2cd for him and whatever else makes it work

They decided to do 11/7 as a coaching decision while having other players. That is a massive difference. If the leafs can only have 11/7 on their team due to cap issues, with no way to accrue cap over time (can't accrue cap while on LTIR), then the GM really messed up. **** happens and IFthe GM ended up in this situation because of unforseen events, so be it. But here he came in at the draft and controlled free agency where HE created a cap situation where he is a couple hundred K shy of having a 21st player and thus can't have a normal 12 forward and 6 defenseman on his roster, then he messed up. He couldn't have convinced a few players to take a 1-2% pay cut so we aren't in this situation? Was he that short sighted? And for a new guy on the job its a fairly large mess up that does not build confidence.

20 man roster without losing anyone to waivers is an 11/7 configuration

And it's cap compliant

I get that. But the fact that the gm put himself in that spot where the only option to not lose someone is to only have 11/7 as an option is a fail.

Yeah I wouldn't have signed Domi