Sunday’s waiver wire sent Leafs fans and bloggers into a spiral of question marks as Jason Spezza and Aaron Dell were made available to the rest of the league. As unfortunate as Nick Robertson’s injury was considering how much work he put in since last May to get to a season debut with the Leafs, the salary cap repercussions of it, as far as the taxi - uh - stay ready squad, is another can of worms.

Nick Robertson down. What’s next?

There’s still something about this set of moves that doesn’t click. On the bright side, the quote from Spezza’s agent Rick Curran helps ease worries of the 37-year-old being claimed. To be blunt, if another team were to pick Spezza from the Leafs, he would:

Simply retire

Dell, on the other hand, is the head-scratcher.

Kyle Dubas made it clear that he didn’t forget what happened last season. The Leafs were in hot water looking for a backup goaltender after Curtis McElhinney and Calvin Pickard were claimed off of waivers. The early signings of Dell and Michael Hutchinson was a way to ensure the organization was set up well to deal with missing goaltenders. Unfortunately, the Nick Robertson injury “forced” Dubas’ hand, and we sit and wait for noon.

Given Spezza’s attitude towards staying in Toronto, which has now been made clear to everyone, he’ll clear and kick around on the stay ready squad. Dell will likely be picked up, and all signs point to Edmonton being the villain given their goaltending situation right now.

We’ll have to get used to the idea of Michael Hutchinson being the third name in the pipeline and hope nothing goes wrong elsewhere. The biggest shame was that we never got to see the gear in action. That’s the waiver wire for you.

(FWIW, I went really hard on the reverse jinxing).

Who will be claimed?

Aaron Dell330
Jason Spezza1
Dell and Spezza14
Neither123

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