Tim Thomas: A Perfect Fit For The Leafs

By GerryC-Leafs4ever

I’ll list quite a few reasons why Thomas is a perfect answer to the Leafs goalie problems.

1) He’d be a great mentor to the young inexperienced  Reimer & Scrivens.

2) He’d also be a great veteran presence to the rest of the team which is in dire need of some veteran leadership.

3) Thomas has nerves of steel. Unlike Luongo, Thomas won’t get fazed or un-nerved having cameras in his face 24/7, especially when the Leafs hit a rough patch. You want a guy in net who’s a rock so he can shrug off the distractions, not buckle under the insane pressure  in Toronto like Luongo probably will.   Thomas could be that rock in net the Leafs badly need, much like Cujo & Belfour were from 100-2004.

4)  Thomas  has won his cup,  so the cliche of ” a veteran player eager to go to a contender to win his first  cup may not  apply here”.  Makes a  huge difference cause a 35 veteran who has yet to win a cup  would  very likely NOT  be interested  in coming to a team like the Leafs who isn’t close to a cup.   Thomas coming  to TO,  with a cup ring  already in his pocket,  perhaps he’ll look  at it as a different new challenge, helping the Leafs get over their 7 year hump of no playoffs.

Top 6 better… but need to be BADDER

The first thing I did when researching this article was to look for a suitable image that would capture the meaning of one of the four words Brian Burke described what his hockey teams played like. Remember, way back on November 29, 2008, the famous pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence speech. Now, the word truculence is not a word you hear very often, so I chose it to be the word I would use for my image search and lo and behold, right there on the first page is a picture of our boy Luke, pounding away on Tyler Kennedy.

With the recent additions of Mike Brown and Colby Armstrong, the Leaf management team has added some additional truculence to the bottom 6 and Kris Versteeg increases the skill level to the top 6, but as the title suggests, there is an element or two lacking in the current construction of that half-dozen.

Best of the Rest UFA’s

This is a best of rest UFA’s available blog. The Maple Leafs so far have  traded Viktor Stalberg, Chris DiDomenico and Phillip Paradis to the Chicago Blackhawks for Kris Versteeg and Billy Sweatt.

July 1st, 2010

-Colby Armstrong signs a 3 year/$9mil deal.

– Joey Crabb signs 1 year, two way deal worth 525k, 200k in the AHL.

– Danny Richmond (D) signs 1 year, two way deal worth 550k, 200k in the AHL

– Mike Zigomanis (F) signs 1 year, two way deal worth 500k, 250k in the AHL

Best of the Rest UFA’s based on James Mirtle’s top 100 UFAs:

Leafs Update Central – June 28, 2010

The 2010 NHL Entry draft has passed with little movement and only ripples in the pond compared to previous years’ splashes.

Brian Burke and the Toronto Maple Leafs made a few minor moves, trading unsigned prospect Jimmy Hayes for a 2nd round pick in this years draft to select Brad Ross at the #43 slot, trading a 5th round pick to Anaheim for Mike Brown, and a couple of minor deals swapping picks for picks.

All-in-all, a quiet but productive weekend for the Blue and White.

This week promises to be a little more exciting with July 1st, Double-B’s self-proclaimed draft, fast approaching. I’ll be using this space here to track all the top-free agents. I’m using the top-100 UFAs list courtesy of James Mirtle. I’ll be crossing out all the names as they are signed and adding dollars, terms and my analysis on each of Brian Burke’s acquisitions when the information is available. Enjoy!

Leafs Update Central – June 13, 2010

The 2009-10 NHL season has come to an end, and (like I predicted in pre-season) the Chicago Blackhawks have taken home Lord Stanley’s Cup, leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs with the longest current Stanley Cup drought. Not to fret though, as Brian Burke and his team of trusted advisors are exploring every avenue of correcting that little problem within the next few seasons.

The next three weeks will determine much for the Leafs future, and Burke has his hands full. Lucky for him, he has the likes of Cliff Fletcher, Dave Nonis, Dave Poulin, and Claude Loiselle helping him make the most of it. The draft is fast approaching, and therefore so is the trade window in Tomas Kaberle’s contract, as well as Free Agency.

Leafs Update Central – March 31, 2010

Welcome back folks, sorry for the delayed Leafs Update.

Last weeks article consisted of several of our ‘bigger named UFAs and RFAs’ and I thought that wasn’t fair to everyone so I decided to promote a portion of this update to those players. All the information I’ll be sharing with you was found on the ever so helpful capgeek.com, so kudos to those guys who manage that site.

For most of you, June 1st, 2010 is a big day. Hopefully Kaberle will have been traded and there will be another $4.25 million for Burke to sign a few players to fill out the roster. But what does Burke have to deal with other than that? Something that goes under the radar a little is the status of our RFAs and our UFAs.