Are you wondering what your plan of attack should be this summer? Preparing for a draft? Upset about some trades you made in the past? I’ll weigh in with my thoughts on the interesting and important issues.

I will be running these audits on a weekly basis throughout the summer. Fire me an e-mail if you want to get in line!

Today I’ll be taking a look at the team submitted to me by DobberHockey reader Justin (known on the forums as joos).

The Team

The Toronto Pot Leafs

The Rules

- 14 team dynasty H2H salary cap league (over this offseason, had 2 exp teams added
- Use real NHL salaries (not cap hits), this year’s cap is 75.5 mill max
- 21 player active roster: 12F, 6 or 7D, and 2 or 3G 
- 25 player prospect team (92 GP max for skaters, 60 GP max for goalies)
- Start: 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 4D, 2Util, 2G
- Stats: G, A, +/-, PIM, PPG, PPA, SHP, SOG, FW, GWG | W, GAA, Sv%, SVS, SO
- Prospects can be prompted/demoted anytime during the season with a .250 mill fee.

RFA bidding - Other GMs are allow to bid on players entering RFA over the offseason (ex. Backstrom, Toew, Kane) to a max bid of $10 million.  The person who has the RFA is allowed to match or take compensation from the GM who bid. 

Compensation is either prospect picks, UFA picks or cap space.

UFA - Players are able to keep UFA if they resign to a team before June 20th.

Any UFA that is not signed by June 20th will go to FA draft

Prospect Draft:

New 3 round prospect draft

Only players with fewer than 100 NHL games played (50 NHL games played for Goalies)

Prospect farm is capped at 10 players

Must be promoted after 100 NHL games or they go to waiver, once promoted, they cannot go back

The Roster

Notable Prospects

Sonne, Robak, Maclean, Gilroy, Schroeder, S.Elliott, Gerbe, M. Johnasson, Despres, A.Hutchings, Vasyunov, M.Lee(G), Neuvirth (G)

Recent Trades

Incoming: Derrick Brassard

Outgoing: $5.5 mill in cap space + 12th overall prospect this year + 2011 1st round prospect + 2012 2nd round prospect draft pick

Essentially, Brassard will cost Justin $5.5 + his salary for 2010-11, and then he will return to his salary beyond this season. Plekanec was not retained so Brassard slides in as a replacement. I like this move assuming the cap space isn’t a significant issue. Proven > unproven.

Outgoing: Phaneuf + Beleskey + $2 mill cap space for 2010

Incoming: Berglund + Kulikov + Bergeron (whom I had to buy out)

This trade was made mostly for salary reasons. Kulikov has tremendous upside, as does Berglund. Phaneuf is proven, but the other two have shown the ability to play in the NHL as well. Nice move.

Outgoing: Doan + Wolski

Incoming: Benn + Justin Williams

Salary dump.

Outgoing: O’Sullivan + Justin Williams

Incoming: prospect draft pick

Solid trade. O’Sullivan is a man without a home, and Williams looks to be a few steps behind the speed of the game after a few knee surgeries.

The Breakdown

Justin has some cheap filler players like Maxwell and Butler to keep some cap space open this offseason.

With regards to the prospects, Schroeder, Gerbe, and Neuvirth are the three closest to NHL action. Both Schroeder and Gerbe are small forwards who play big (both will play wing at the NHL level), and Neuvirth is the potential goalie of the future in Washington. Gilroy is a safe bet to see NHL minutes as well, but he is a bit of a one-trick pony right now.

The Recommendations

1) Change your league rules! Salary leagues NEED to count cap hit, not the actual dollar figure. NHL signings are valued and based on cap hit. The only people who care about the actual salary are the players and the owners paying them the money. As managers, it is illogical (to me, at least) to have Luongo count for $10 million of your salary cap, while he is really only counting for $5.33 million against Vancouver’s cap.

2) Keep Halak. Elite goalie on a young team with loads of upside.

3) Get some depth at center and on defense. Most people have problems finding players for the RW and LW categories, but you are very strong in both. Crosby and Backstrom is as good as it gets for the top two centers, but Brassard is inconsistent and injury prone. On defense, Phaneuf “should” bounce back. Even if he does, you are still relying too much on Burns and Jack Johnson for my liking.

4) Trade bait: Dustin Brown (better in real life than fantasy), Hartnell (great combo guy, value inflated after strong postseason), Schultz (one-trick pony in fantasy hockey).

Comments (1)

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Irvine said:

	... This league seems far too complicated. I find hard to follow the salary/cap hits.
	report abuse vote down vote up

July 12, 2010
Votes: +0