MLHS’s Anthony Petrielli joined The FAN Morning Show to discuss John Chayka’s busy July 1 and Morgan Rielly’s current situation.
On John Chayka’s July 1 work:
Honestly, most of the things he did sort of revolved around Auston Matthews. Whether that is good or bad, we’ll find out, but let’s look at the moves.
Matthews, last season, didn’t have a right shot with him pretty much the whole time. Jack Roslovic gives him that option. They have a history together and played together as the USNDTP program. They’re friends. You could see a plausible fit for him to play on that line, at least sporadically or as someone to mix it up.
They added a number of checking forwards. If you look back to Matthews’ last season, he took on tough minutes. You are going to get tough minutes regardless, when you are the 1C and a player of his stature, but his deployment, compared to guys like Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon — other top-echelon players he is in the company of — he played way more difficult minutes with way worse linemates. They’ve now added in all of these checking forwards, I assume in an attempt to pull back those difficult minutes and actually have Matthews focus on what he does best, which is score.
If you look at the lineup without Matthews, it still gets tough pretty quickly. You are now looking at Tavares, Paul, and maybe Roslovic. It falls apart pretty quickly without him, and they didn’t really add that quality-level center. But they added a bunch of checkers to make his life easier defensively, so he hopefully scores a ton and can get back to leading them.
A lot of it felt focused on making Matthews better in roundabout ways.
On how the style of the team might have shifted:
They should be a faster team. That shouldn’t come as a surprise; Jim Hiller has talked a lot about skating. Sissons and Duhaime can move. Roslovic has whels. They’ve added some actual speed to their line-up. Compare it to some of the guys they’ve let go; Maccelli is not a bad skater, but he prefers to slow the game down and doesn’t particularly play fast. In turn, they’ve added some genuine speed to their lineup.
Speed kills. It’s been true in hockey for 100 years and still remains true now. That is a notable theme they’ve honed in on.
They’ve also gone with a lot of veterans. They are signing a bunch of players over 30 when they could’ve potentially pursued trade options of players in their mid-20s. We saw a bunch of them move over the last couple of days, whether it is Olen Zellweger, Mavrik Bourque, or Jack Drury – these early-to-mid-20s players who have moved largely for draft picks, which the Leafs do have or had before using them.
They’ve added these veteran players — Sissons has gone to two Cup Finals, and Blueger has won the Cup. As you go through the mix, Duhaime was on the President’s Trophy-winning Capitals team and played a significant role on that team relative to what he is. They’ve added players with some experience who have been around the league and had some level of team success, and are players who value the defensive side of the puck. These are players who will be happy with their job as a checker, and they’re going to do it night after night after night.
I am almost a little bit surprised by how many grinders they signed.
On the Sergei Bobrovsky three-year contract:
I don’t know if I am crazy over the moon with the signing, but goalies are always a tricky one.
You can see some of the logic here. He has made 50+ starts in nine of the last 10 seasons. The one season he didn’t was the bubble season. He has generally had a baseline for availability and playing games. The Leafs haven’t had that.
Joseph Woll, for all of the talk of his injury history, has played 42 and 39 games the past two seasons. That’s not a low number; it is a reasonable, platoon-goalie level. But you couldn’t count on him, right? Last season started with him showing up to camp, then abruptly leaving. No one heard anything for a while, and then he came back. There is no judgment for whatever reason he did it, but that is hard on a team when you are showing up to get the ball rolling, he immediately leaves, and he is supposed to be a big piece of it, but you don’t know when he is coming back or what is happening. It is kind of hard to put into words the dynamic that can create for the group with a player you’re supposed to count on. Stolarz was overplayed and got hurt. It was just a mess.
Bobrovsky, if nothing else, is dependably there and available. He has had that for a very long time now. He is obsessive about his work and how he manages his body.
You can argue about the performance last year. Objectively, he was just not good last season on a team that was also not good last season. They didn’t have much to play for maybe 40% of the season. How much of it was just what was happening around the team, and everything that goes along with it, is fair to question.
And then there is the pedigree. If Bobrovsky retires tomorrow, he is a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Couple of Vezinas. Couple of Cups. Someone like Mats Sundin was here with the Pat Quinn era, and they’re going to bet on HHOF talent at all times. He was here when Ed Belfour signed, and it would’ve been the same kind of conversations at the time — coming off a bad season, was 37, had won a Cup in Dallas. He came to Toronto, and his first two years were two of the best of his career.
He has a baseline of being available and handling a starter’s workload, which is important when looking at Stolarz and Akhytamov as the next two in line. Again, he is still a HHOF talent.
I can see it, but man, they are making a big bet because he wasn’t good last year.
On whether it’s safe to say Matthew Knies will now be on the roster in training camp:
Knies is a really good, young, unique player who likes the market. He has shown an ability to step up in big games and have some big moments. At times, he can be a physical force who uses his body to dictate where he is going with the puck and what he wants to do. All of that is good, but at some point, it sounds like there needs to be a conversation with him. It sounds like they have, as Chayka has alluded to it a couple of times.
Otherwise, when it is a guy like Werenski potentially on the table, you can’t really blame them. He won the Norris last year. He is one of the best defensemen in the league. If you have the chance to acquire a guy like that and he is interested in coming here, you have to pursue it by all means. Those are opportunities that come up very rarely, and there is a reason even a team like Columbus is putting out a statement about it. It is a big deal when a guy like him moves.
It is an unfortunate price of doing business. Either way, you would be happy with the scenarios. It might’ve gotten dicey regarding Knies when people were talking about top-10 draft capital. You can understand the allure of that, but signing a guy like Darren Raddysh just to turn around and trade Knies for a guy who won’t play in the league this upcoming season or maybe the season after that wouldn’t have made any sense.
If this is the way the dust has settled, Werenski is staying put, and so is Knies, the Leafs have nothing to complain about. He is a good player under contract for years to come and fits here in the top six nicely. He is the only one who does what he does on this team. No one else is even close to him.
On whether the John Carlson contract (2×8.5) is more desirable than Darren Raddysh’s 8×8.5:
I’d be lying if my first reaction wasn’t, “Tampa does it again.”
Look, I like Raddysh, and he is younger, obviously. He was a good fit in Tampa. They have a proof of concept there. But two years of Carlson come with essentially no risk. He was very, very good last season. He is an easy guy for them to slot into that lineup and basically do what Raddysh did last season.
When you look at it, they came out like bandits on it. They’ve taken on no risk. I don’t know if he will put up 70 points like Raddysh did last season, but the likelihood of him being productive in that spot is very, very high. The Leafs obviously have the risk that Raddysh is a one-year guy.
The difference: It is a lot to ask someone who is 36 or 37 to drive the bus, especially on defense, compared to someone who is 30. That would be the benefit for the Leafs, but they’re paying for that with a big term.
On Morgan Rielly’s status:
San Jose was always a potential, logical destination for him, and now with Trouba and Nurse, it would be wild if they also went for Rielly.
The options are running out. There are not a ton of spots that make sense. Maybe Anaheim still kind of needs a defenseman, but they are pretty good down the left side as things stand with Lacombe and Mintyukov (RFA, but will be signed).
Part of the question I would have, if they do move Rielly: Who is coming in now? Most of the notable UFA defenseman have been signed, if not all of them. Are you just going to run a top six with Emil Andrae and Troy Stecher? That wouldn’t make a ton of sense to me.
You could potentially, maybe move him, but if you do, what is the plan there? You would have to backfill it, to some degree.
