The Toronto Maple Leafs and Teddy Blueger have come to terms on a two-year deal worth $2.5 million per season.
Blueger is a player we noted in our free agent series:
“Blueger is a no-frills fourth-line center capable of handling a traditional fourth-line role. He can take defensive-zone faceoffs, contribute on the penalty kill, and absorb some difficult matchup minutes — a theme we’ve discussed repeatedly throughout this piece.
Blueger is a limited player. He’s about to turn 32, has played more than 450 NHL games, and has never recorded a double-digit goal season or surpassed 28 points. He is a career 50 percent faceoff man and finished below that mark last season, which again isn’t ideal for a checking center.
He’s essentially fine for what he is, and that’s a description that isn’t all that different from David Kampf.
Can he stop-gap a bottom-six checking role? Absolutely.
Can he do much beyond that? Probably not.”
His AFP salary projection was $2.7 million AAV over three years, so in that sense, the Leafs got him at a lower cap hit than projected.
As noted, he is a no-frills 4C capable of handling checking minutes and taking on a defensive-zone role.
A few seasons ago in Vancouver, Blueger primarily played with Dakota Joshua and Conor Garland on what became a very effective third line for the Pacific Division-winning Canucks. Alongside Joshua specifically, they won their minutes 23-11 in more than 400 five-on-five minutes together, heavily tilting the ice in the process. Of course, Garland was generally the primary driver of that line, not Joshua or Blueger.
The player is fine, and the contract is fine for what he is in this market.
The big question will be how this all shakes out. Are they playing Blueger and Sissons together on an expensive fourth line, paving the way for Jacob Quillan to try to be a more offensive-minded 3C (or even Bo Groulx)? Or are Sissons and Blueger simply the 3C and 4C? Their contracts certainly support either deployment.
Short of Quillan emerging as an effective contributor, this likely won’t be enough if they want to become a true contender.
What it should do, hopefully, is give the Leafs enough options to form a proper checking line and free up Auston Matthews, who has had some of the most difficult minutes in the league over the past two seasons.
That will mean Matthews has to hold up his end of the bargain and be significantly more productive. We don’t need to relitigate this in every write-up, but Matthews simply wasn’t close to good enough last season. In theory, they’ve cleared the way a little more for him to focus on the offensive side of the game, but he’ll still need to be much better.
As things stand, the bottom six now features some combination of Blueger, Sissons, Joshua, and Lorentz. Potentially, Jacob Quillan is in that mix as well. There isn’t much offensive upside in that group, and even if you bump a player like Easton Cowan into the lineup following the signing of Jack Roslovic, you’re asking a lot of him to play alongside players who don’t offer much offensively.
They’ve certainly added some quality checkers, but they still look at least one quality forward short — and that’s assuming a player like Joshua rebounds.
What this should do is improve the team defensively overall. The Leafs finished second-last in the league in goals against per game last season. They have now added two checking centers, a new starting goalie, two new defensemen, and one offensive forward in Roslovic.
Improving defensively isn’t sexy, but it can raise the floor of this team and make them substantially better overall. That said, they still need to add more firepower, ideally in the form of a quality third-line center.
