Has Burke gone from slick to silly in a few short moves?

The writing is good, but a lot of these points have been dealt with with a combination of understanding BB’s plan and player-style preference, the present hesitancy with a lot of GMs to trade not knowing what the cap is next year, and with the input of the PPP community.
The pros around here tend to hash these things ad nauseum, so I’m sure you’ll hear some good insight tomorrow (this morning?).
Stralman had to go due to a waivers issue, a 2nd is infinitely more valuable than nothing.
Kubina had to go b/c of contract and price- Komisarek and Beauchemin are fine replacements. Exelby will either get #6 play and minutes or be packaged up.
If we’re lucky, that #2 will turn out to be the next Scott Neidemayer.
With luck, there’s an crafty trade coming yet to bring us a solid goal-scorer, and if not, we’re looking a hell of a lot better now than we did a year ago, by a long way. That’s more than enough for me.
At any rate, triple, like I said, good writing and very good first diary.

I appreciate the feedback kidkwartha, and you make a lot of valid points.

Certainly Burke has a plan, evidenced by the core longterm deals he’s surrounding Schenn with. Frankly what he does next yr, and how the college UFAs like Bozak and Hanson fit into the roster really intrigues me.

Add in the fact no-one is looking to help him clear his logjam without a significant benefit, and things get tricky. He’s also in the midst of a situation not of his creation, but that’s where the UFA moves come in. Instead of giving more than he was getting, he added players to the roster.

I’m aware of the waiver issue, but IMO that is the reason you want to retain him. The 2009 season is a write off, with an incredible percent of the roster hitting free agency in 2010. Most of those pieces will either be gone before the end of 2009, or leave via UFA like Exelby, Van Ryan, Frogren.

Stralman will have 2 seasons under his belt by 2010. With Schenn, Komisarek, Beauchimin, and Finger (sadly) the only guys 100% to be here in 2010 and beyond we have @ least 2 roster spots to fill out on D. He’ll be due his first RFA deal, and slotting him in the 5-6 hole going forward with the hopes of progress is better than getting random junk @ double the price via UFA.

Like I mentioned with White, I doubt we retain him as he’s due to a James Wisneiwski type deal in the $2.5 range..too much for a RFA #5 Dman.

Had the logjam been addressed by the Kubina deal, instead of solely being a salary dump, then I don’t mind the Stralman for a pick as much. Stralman didn’t HAVE to go, as he and White are the only move-able/desirable assets aside from Kaberle currently on the backend.

However we are now left with no inhouse solution for our D depth this yr in the case of injury and nothing on the farm either..

 Anton Sralman will never compare to brayden Coburn. Coburn was a Blue Chipper. Stralman is a questionable prospect who hasn’t made enough strides yet to make a team as bad as the Leafs were. Kubina had to be moved this summer because the Leafs could have risked him not waiving his NTC during the season and walking away next free agency.

Plus we have a ton of cap room next year, no matter what. Burkie will be in the driver’s seat for free agency. This year is his set-up year. I think you can guarantee there’s at least one, if not two, 35+ goal scorers coming our way.
Plus, he’s still not done- I’m certain he’s working the phones all day long. Even if we do sit pat right now, we’ll be fine. A good development year.

I said it in the post, and I’ll say it again.

I am NOT comparing Coburn vs Stralman in terms of production and NHL ability. They are different players with different abilities.

The point of drawing a career parallel is that neither was given any time with their first team. A young defenseman take 2-3 seasons before any tangible development/progress is evident.

Saying that Stralman didn’t show enough in limitied minutes in a 6th to 8th man role is ludicrous. What does one expect out of that?

The point of those games is to bring him along in garbage time, not evaluate his future worth. Compare him to White for example. It wasn’t until his second contract and some meaningful icetime was it determined he was useful.

To be honest I would tag Stralman as a longterm project, who should be brought along as the 5th Dman for around $1.5 mil in 2010 and 2011, with 2012 being the make or break yr for him.

Stralman is waiver eligible…Coburn at the time was waiver exempt.

I’ll consider Stuart + 7th/Primeau a wash, so effectively we got a 2nd round pick for Stralman. Meanwhile the Thrashers traded Braydon Coburn for a little over a year of Alexei Zhitnik. Worst case scenario if Stralman develops well? We did better than Atlanta…and Atlanta still had the option of putting Coburn in the minors and waiting for him to develop!

The Leafs wouldn’t have that option with Stralman. At this point you’ve got to think that Kaberle, Schenn, Komisarek and Beauchemin would play more minutes than him. So that would leave White, Finger, Van Ryn, Exelby…and Stralman, competing for two spots (okay, three if you think the Leafs will carry 7 defensemen, might be an idea).

Sure, Stralman could be excellent in camp and get that full-time spot…but if not, what happens?

The Leafs would put Stralman on waivers, and someone out there would probably grab him.

But even if not…I remember that Stralman didn’t even want to come to North America unless he was playing in the NHL (the Leafs were thin on defense at the time so he got the chance). If he got demoted again he’d probably go back to Sweden.

Both of those would result in the Leafs getting nothing for Stralman…so instead the Leafs get a 2nd round pick and help clear up their defenseman logjam a little bit.

As for whether Stralman will excel in Calgary, there’s four locks for the team (Phaneuf, Bouwmeester, Regehr, Sarich) over there too, and all of those are locked up for three years or more. I wonder how much time Stralman will get.

As an aside, the Leafs picked up a 2nd round pick to save the Flames approximately $1 million in cap space (and real money). Think about it…if the Sens traded Dany Heatley to the Leafs, the Sens could save $30 million plus in cap space (over 6 years…and even more real money!). Perhaps the Sens should pass some 1st round picks over here to save some bucks? ;)

Excellent post. I agree that this move is not Burke’s finest. It marks the first time I’ve felt aprehensive to his hockey knowledge thus far at the helm.

I assume that he knows something about Stralman that I don’t.

All the moves to bring defence in make sense when you consider two things:

1) Burke was not happy with the defence we currently had. There simply wasn’t enough physicality there; too many of our old defence seemed to think offence first, and that was okay when we had Joseph in his prime and Belfour just starting down the other side of his. But when you have Raycroft, Toskala and a 41 year old Joseph in those net, it doesn’t work so well.

2) The defence prospect cupboard was razor-thin. Schenn moved right up into the top 4 as a rookie, which both goes to show how NHL-ready he was, and also how little depth we had. By adding Beauchemin & Komisarek, Burke’s bought himself time to rebuild the defence with younger kids, because Schenn, Komisarek, Beauchemin and Finger are all signed long-term. And that’s before even debating whether or not we can get Kaberle re-signed.

As a 7th round pick, the fact that we’re even debating Stralman’s merits as a future NHLer is excellent, because finding players that late in the draft is just too damn hard. But fact remains, Stralman did not possess skills that set him apart from our other defence. I’m interested to hear which 3 defence you think Stralman is ahead of on the depth chart, because I had him 9th out of 10.

I’m concerned that people are starting to lose the forest for the trees. Every deal going back to when JFJ was canned has dealt a player that did not figure into the long-term future of this club. Some deals have been better than others, but debating whether we got as much as we perceive we could have for Kubina is a fool’s errand. We don’t truly know what Kubina’s value in a trade around the league was, we only have the information we’re provided after the deal.

A defenceman had to be moved now, on Burke’s terms, before camp started and we were caught in the same situation as last year. I’m much more open to dealing a marginal NHL defenceman with upside for a future pick than having to make another Steen – Cola / Stempniak deal. Because that would have been the alternative.

Nobody said this was gonna be easy. This team has been given a major facelift this offseason, and hasn’t even had a shift to show what it can do yet.

Thanks for joining.

It was an interesting analysis and hit on a couple of the things that bothered me about the deal. The part about the contract and Stralman being a cheap and controllable asset were bang on. The one worry with Stralman is that he might have gone back to Europe if he had to spend another season with the Marlies.
 
The Kubina deal certainly takes on more of a salary dump feel now that Stuart is gone and Exelby likely will be at the end of the year. If you compare it to what Sutter was able to get from his smaller salary dump you get the sense that while Burke didn’t have to give up any picks he also didn’t get much back for a much more useful player.

Further to clrkaitken’s point, Burke and Fletcher have drafted a couple of defencemen that Burke at least mentioned are likely 3 years away so I agree that maybe Burke has largely given up on the current crop of prospects.

Thanks for the welcome.

Group therapy session indeed!

I think you’re jumping the gun a bit. Burke himself has said he’s not done tweaking the roster. He’s got a surplus of D and deep pockets. If he can’t offload more dead weight over the off season, then he’ll probably bury them in the Marlies.

As for the Kubina return, just because he took XLB back doesn’t mean he’s going to be a Leaf. He’s a decent player being paid very little. From a trading perspective, he’s the perfect pot sweetener.

Until the season begins, I think it’s safer (but less fun…) to reserve judgment. I’ve got no idea how this team is going to look come opening day. The saving grace however, is having confidence in the guy running the ship. He knows what he wants to do with this team.

Unless Stralman made the team out of camp and stuck all year Toronto would have lost him for nothing. Stralman isn’t waiver exempt.

Burke got a second round pick for something we don’t have room for and would have lost for free.

With so many assets approaching UFA or RFA, Burke has moved two of his primary trade pieces in Stralman and Kubina without any impact on the team’s rebuilding process. It would have been more prudent to let Stralman find his game in the 5th-7th slots @ a cheap price going into 2010 and forward, or using him and Kubina to provide more youth in security.

Instead the Leafs find themselves loaded with low quality forwards, expiring vet contracts, and a mid-2nd rounder they may or may not draft in 2 years. It’s a long time between now and 2011…and these moves have done nothing to fill the roster gaps in the meantime. Nor are they clearing 2010 cap space as all the deals involved are UFA or RFA in 2010.

This is the statement of someone who doesn’t understand the long-term view.

This season does not matter at all. Notice the polar opposite approaches Burke and Gainey took this summer.

Monreal is trying to prove that last year was the fluke, (when all evidence seems to show finishing 1st was the anomaly) and so Gainey threw money at anything and everything. The team has no cap flexibilty, is tied to a number of long-term, potentially crippling contracts, and their top young players may already be regressing. If Montreal misses the playoffs, the team will have no clear-cut way to improve itself, and Gainey will be fired.

Compare to Toronto. The team was a pleasant surprise last season, but weakensses were identified. Burke spent the summer focusing on the team’s weaknesses, and addressed in some fashion pretty much all of them. The team has a number of contracts expiring at the end of the season, which means that anybody that doesn’t fit with the long-term plan of this team is gone, and Burke can go to work retooling the roster. There are a number of young forwards who have every chance to develop as a unit, because we didn’t waste cap space on an inferior top 6 forward just to say we have one. We’ll roll the dice with a number of talented kids with promise, cultivate their development, and ride the waves of inconsistency. The team is fast, mean, has the biggest chequebook in the league, and now has someone who knows how to use it, and is about to have a lot of freedom to spend it how he wants.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer that oulook to Montreal’s

Burke is very intelligent, but his views on how to build a team are pretty simple.

The fact of the matter is(and I touched upon this in the trade thread) if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Reasons why Burke didn’t want Stralman

1. Had some chances, showed some skill but never really proved he could be a regular NHLer yet.

2. Logjam at D means some people have to go. Some are going after this year when their contract is up. Perhaps he was the only one of those guys he could get some sort of decent return on.

3. BB has repeatedly said that your top guys need to be skilled and your bottom guys are your plumbers. Stralman wasn’t going to be good enough to play in the top 2-3 D-men on our(or probably any) NHL team. Watch him play, Stralman is not a plumber.

4. Contract/waiver status – lets face it, if he doesn’t get some serious NHL time this year, he is going back to the Swedish elite league. Pretty high flight risk.

Considering those points, Burke wasn’t going to make room for Stralman. What do you do with him? Well, the last thing I want to do is let a player walk for nothing, and Burke is the same way when it comes to managing assets. He went out and got the best deal he could. I don’t see any sort of big advantage for the Leafs, but we could have gotten nothing for him. I have no issue with that.

We tend to overvalue players on our team – Most GM’s don’t, so we will never get back what we think a player is worth.

Essentially, we traded someone that had a minimal chance to play for the Leafs and we got a pick out of it. That’s pretty much it.

 I think that one of the big issues is that Burke’s first order of business was to shore up a Leafs defense that was soft and defensively suspect. Bringing in Komisarek, Beauchemin and Exelby is part of that but they’re not the guys who make Stralman a spare part. Kaberle, White and Van Ryn do. Burke already has three guys who aren’t especially physical who should be in the mix for regular ice time. Stralman hasn’t shown enough through two regimes in Toronto to stick with the big team and when that is added to his waiver status and impatience to play in the NHL he’s clearly the odd man out.
 It seems to me that although in some ways it may not seem to be the best way to manage an asset, Stralman’s not the only asset who would be effected by forcing him into the lineup.

It’s the name of the game in the cap era, and Burke hasn’t been making me comfortable with his moves.

It’s not a matter of saying “well we would have lost Stralman to waivers anyways” because the Leafs should not be in a position where they simply just don’t have the roster space for cheap, young, controllable defense. Not now, while we’re “retooling” and really not ever.

The Leafs need flexibility and depth moving forward, and it’s looking like we’re going to continue to be dipping into the free agent pool and overpaying for older guys because we simply couldn’t keep some tiers with regards to age and salary in our d corps. Right now we have a bunch of 28+ year olds making at least 2.9 million, that’s not a flexible core.

Also, to be perfectly honest, a defenseman making 3 million dollars should never be 5th and 6th on the chart, it’s a waste of their ability. There are roughly 75 players in the NHL making over 3 million, and with 120 “top four” spots in the league it becomes obvious that we’re overpaying the bottom half of our corps. Doesn’t it seem that we traded the wrong pieces sometimes?

This is the real problem with the logjam on defense, it’s roster spots taken up by older players forcing our hand into dealing competent, cheap, young, controllable assets like Colaiacovo and Stralman. Will it make next years defense worse? Heck no, they’re looking extremely good. But a few years down the line and the situation becomes troubling, there’s nobody left in the pipeline to ease the transition from now into the draft picks we’ve taken recently, and there’s nobody left who can make less money while filling a depth role while actually having the potential to improve. And we need players to surprise us, we need to find gems for less cash, and it’s not going to happen if we never develop anybody.

There’s a lot of justification and Burke-faith going on in Leafland, but the fact remains we’ve been bleeding this team’s depth in favour of old, high-earning guys we can’t get rid of. We can’t let decent NHLers go just because they weren’t perceived as the most important parts of the team. It’s what the Sens have been doing the past few years and it hasn’t been pretty for them. It’s what the Habs have been doing too, and now they’re trying to buy themselves a new forward core just like we’re trying to buy ourselves a defense. Except that the best players never reach the market, and you almost always pay too much to bring those guys in. Buying a team is not an effective strategy.