Sunday's FTB: Pivot to Free Agency

With the draft over, and 10 new Leafs prospects safely tucked away in the developer fluid baths, the Leafs have to pivot to free agency quickly.

Qualifying Offers for RFAs are due tomorrow at noon, and free agency officially opens at noon on Wednesday. Unofficially? Well, it's obvious some careful conversations happen between teams and agents in advance.

"So, Agent Paul, if you you had a player who was around 31, around 6-5 and around 212 lbs, and he was familiar with Toronto, what would a totally hypothetical guy like that want in a contract?"

"Well, GM John, if I knew anyone like that, he'd likely want some stability after moving around to a few teams. And he's got a lot to offer. We're think the Knies deal."

"Oh, Paul, no, we're not doing that for a guy his age. What about 4 by 5?"

And so it goes on until the totally hypothetical player ends up on the Leafs on Wednesday afternoon a polite hour or two past noon.

It's become truthy that there are no UFAs. And while it is true that the high-end players are flowing around from team to team via trades, and there are a lot of big money RFAs moving around, the UFA market is not empty. You just can't get a top third of your lineup player there. Not unless you want to take a chance on someone much older than Mr. Hypothetical up there.

Here's an interesting hypothetical not involving thinly veiled references to former Leafs prospects...

A lot of teams who don't really want prospects ended up using picks to draft them they'd been trying hard to trade. Meanwhile there's a list of players under contract who want out of their current teams and those trades never happened.

There's obviously a disconnect on how teams see themselves and how their players do in a lot of cases, but in the game of musical chairs as younger and more effective players were bid on with picks, a lot of teams were left standing with a teenager at the end of the night they didn't really want to take home.

No one, well, Vegas does, but no one trades prospects right after the draft. Are they going to start, or has the endowment effect already worked its magic (assuming it's actually real and not yet another social science concept that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.)

I find it hard to believe, to take the example, that Detroit will trade Dylan Larkin for some picks in next year's draft. So maybe the Wild will offer older prospects or players, but maybe the market is suddenly not so liquid when there's no top-10 picks moving around.

One thing is for sure. The Cap Hits that will get agreed to this week will be very large, and players like Mr. Hypothetical there really will get something like Matthew Knies is paid. Or more. We've now hit the point where having cash (in terms of cap space) actually is an asset, but only if the team is willing to spend the real money that backs it up.

John Chayka talked about shoring up the depth yesterday, was cagey on the subject of goalies, and never gives a direct yes or no to a question. Glances at the calendar. Situation normal.