The off season is here

The off season has officially begun after a karmic conclusion to the Stanley Cup Finals last night (eat shit, Bruins). The compliance buyout period will begin Thursday followed by the draft on Sunday.

As we continued to digest the Bernier move yesterday, the Leafs qualified their new goaltender at a price of $1.525 million and will reportedly begin negotiations on a new contract later this week.

After the jump, let’s (roughly) project the Leafs cap situation headed into the 2013 off season.

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* = RFA after 2013-14 season; ** = UFA after 2013-14 season

• This of course assumes neither MacArthur or Bozak are being re-signed. Also assumes fellow UFAs Ryan O’Byrne and Mike Kostka are walking as well.
• Note that there’s only 10 forwards listed there, and only 6 defencemen when the team will carry 7.
• Seems to me that using the other compliance buyout on Liles’ $3.9 million might be worthwhile, if he can’t be traded. The cap will begin to rise again in 2014-15, so why save one if we need the space now? I doubt Liles will serve as anything more than a 5th or 6th guy with Carlyle at the helm, and Franson and Gunnarsson are due up for raises on the back end. Cap space grows to nearly 12 million with Liles off the books.
• I’m not advocating for the re-signing of McLaren with Orr already signed. Nonis said he wants there to be space for some Marlies to compete, so there isn’t a whole lot of sense in it. I figured I may as well plug him in as a placeholder, cap wise.

Onto the links…

• Jonathan Bernier has been qualified and set to become an RFA on July 5.
• Dave Poulin interviews about the Bernier/Frattin deal.
• Sober Second Thoughts: Cam Charron still doesn’t like the Bernier deal. Best summed up: If we isolate the deal and weigh out a Cost-Benefit analysis, it suggests the Leafs come out ahead. From a positional need standpoint, I’m not so sure.
• Watch a man shriek as the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup. This is nothing. This is how I reacted to the Leafs winning Game 2 in the Bruins series.
• Relive the thrilling finish to the final game of the 2012-13 season. It wasn’t a 4-1 lead but it did cost them the Cup.
• What would you give up to get into the top three of this year’s draft? From VLM.