MVN - Most Valuable Network

Plan The Parade: Leafs Get Hollweg

If Fletcher’s philosophy was to build a team that other teams would hate to play against his latest move will help. With the fifth round pick the Leafs acquired from the Penguins in exchange for Hal Gill they were able to convince the Rangers to let go of  former 8^th round draft pick Ryan Hollweg.

 

Hollweg’s claim to the fame in the NHL thus far is being the recipient of a nasty slash to the face by Chris Simon; that and being one of the dirtiest players in the NHL. I guess the Fletcher and brass felt they needed to bring somebody in to replace the in your face style of Darcy Tucker.

 

Here’s a fun fact to think about. Hollweg has to be one of the only NHL regulars, in the forward position, (he played in 70 games for the Rangers) to have less goals and assists than Hal Gill. Hollweg only recorded 2 goals and 2 assists all season. That’s only 1 assist less than his career high of 5 points that he put up in 2005/2006. Heavyweight fighters like Georges Laraque, and Raitis Ivanans both had more points than him last year.

 

Here’s the Leafs team, thus far, in a nutshell.

 

1. A team with more defenseman than roster places for them.  
2. A team whose greatest scoring threat is Niklas Hagman. (This is based on last seasons scoring statistics)  
3. A team whose backup goalie is more accomplished than the starter.
4. A team whose captain is contemplating between retiring and playing for the Leafs forever rival the Montreal Canadiens. Ok, he could just as well end up back in
   Toronto.

 

Am I being too negative for you? I’m just being realistic. Last season I used the rebuilding plan set fourth by the Philadelphia Flyers to illustrate how quickly rebuilding can be done. The fact is the Leafs couldn’t do what the Flyers did for a few reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that they couldn’t get any young players, old players, draft picks, heck they couldn’t even get a bag of pucks for any of their assets because they all had no trade clauses. When the only players you can move at the trade deadline are Wade Belak, Chad Kilger and Hal Gill, you know there’s a problem. The second, being a farm team that has been beaten and battered by acquisitions of past rental players.

 

I would have liked to see Fletcher go after a few more valuable free agents than he did. I don’t mean the marquee players but if he could have signed a few veterans to one year deals it could help. It would give some of the youth some direction and leadership and come trade deadline they could do it right this time and manage to grab some picks and prospects.

 

As the season slowly approaches all I can say is it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The race for Tavares is on.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Cliff Fletcher, Darcy Tucker, Curtis Joseph, Mats Sundin, Montreal Canadiens, NHL, Niklas Hagman, Toronto Maple Leafs, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.