Andrew Raycroft, seen here doing the only thing he's good at (staring incredulously at pucks in the net), was waived by the Leafs today. Let's all join hands, look up at the sky and say "thank you God, or Cliff, or the spirit of Conn Smythe or whoever".
Keep reading unless you're Andrew Raycroft's mother, in which case you probably should go do something else right about now.
Hopefully the Leafs let Raycroft rot in the AHL for a year and then let him ride off into the UFA sunset. Doing so would result in a cap hit of nothing to Toronto. If another team claims Raycroft off waivers, Toronto would have to pay half his salary (about $1m) and have an equivalent cap hit I believe (I'm fuzzy on this case). The worst case scenario would be Toronto buying out Raycroft, because they would have a cap hit against them for two years and to be realistic, MLSE's got the cash to just pay Raycroft $2m this season to wear a baseball cap in the AHL.
This could be a good sign though. The biggest loophole in the CBA is that teams with a lot of money can waive bad players and send them to the AHL to avoid their cap hits. This is a huge advantage for a club with deep pockets like Toronto, so let's hope that Cliff Fletcher shows the entire world he's playing for keeps this week.
Let's take a look at what we gave up some goalie that no one will ever hear of again for, shall we?
2006-2007 72GP 2.99GAA 0.894SV%
2007-2008 19GP 3.92GAA 0.876SV%
I'm not going to crunch the numbers but in 06-07 Raycroft was close to the worst starting goaltender in the league, and he was just as awful as a backup in 2008. I hate to use wins as a statistic for goaltenders, but Raycroft's record in 2007-2008 was an abhorrent 2-9-5. Two wins in 19 games.
I myself had the pleasure of watching Andrew Raycroft two nights in a row this season, at Long Island and at Philadelphia. What more can you say to two wins in 19 games better than "goodbye"?