The entry draft in any sport is usually meant to help the teams drafting to find players that will either help your team in the upcoming season or grow into some kind of a utility role somewhere down the road.
Teams like the Red Wings, Blues, Capitals, Penguins and Islanders have all had top five draft choices to make over the past few years or so.
Detroit's won Stanley Cups, Pittsburgh won it last season, Chicago won it this year, while the Capitals and Islanders and Blues should all come out of their shells sooner rather then later.
The one team not mentioned up there is Toronto.
The Leafs have traded away so many draft picks over the years that, according to the logic above they may not ever win another Stanley Cup.
They did take Luke Schenn a couple years ago an took Nazem Kadri last year but had no first round draft picks in the draft that was held two weeks ago.
They had traded their first and second round picks to Boston to get Phil Kessel. They also threw in an early pick in next year's draft for good measure??
The Leafs on paper already have a pretty good team.
Brian Burke, Leafs GM was probably hoping to enjoy some 4 of July fireworks this year but from this standpoint that is probably not going to happen. You have to like his attitude though. If there is one thing that can give Leaf fans some hope is that there is only one GM in the NHL that's proven many times over he can build a good team in a strong hockey market (Detroit).
Friday's second round of the Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) shopping passed by quietly on the Leafs' front. They did make a little bit of noise July 1 when they went after Stanley Cup champion Chicago's Kris Versteeg and then moved to sign Colby Armstrong from Atlanta.
One of the biggest names in the game who is still available to be signed is Ilya Kovalchuk. What Burke has apparently been trying to do is find something to do with veteran defenceman Tomas Kaberle. Some sources say that the Leafs are not trying to trade him.
He's one of the steadiest players on the team and has some good tenure in Toronto. It's hard to hold anything against a Maple Leafs defenceman who is usually counted on to quarterback the power play. There was of course Bryan McCabe but that's a whole different story.
It's hard to hold anything against this team because of the market they play in. There's Francois Beauchemin who won a Cup with Anaheim not long ago, Mike Komisarek made a bit of a name for himself in Montreal before moving to Toronto, Dion Phaneuf is that rock-solid defender nobody on any team should ever want to go up against (especially Sean Avery), and Schenn has proven to be everything the Leafs hoped he'd be after one strong season so far-and he's only 20 years old.If Toronto decides that they need to move Kaberle, he might be the only player on the team that may fetch a first or second round pick next year, hopefully more than one pick if Burke plays his cards right.When Burke moved Nik Antropov to the New York Rangers, a first round pick should have been the return; he got a second rounder instead.
With Kaberle, anything less than one opening round pick either next year or the year after, would be in order.
If nothing were to get done, Burke does hold Kaberle's rights for another which isn't bad because it would mean Toronto's defence is going to be that much deeper. He's signed on at $4.25m million US., and that's not bad either considering he had 49 points last season and 42 were assists.
The window to trade him comes Aug. 15.In other free-agent signing news, the Calgary Flames probably take the cake for engineering the one deal that nobody knows what pocessed them to do it. The www.espn.com, website has labelled it the "insane asylum that has become the Calgary Flames' front office."
The move was criticized after Calgary re-acquired the forward that did nobody any good the last time he played here. Olli Jokinen was brought back to Calgary on July 1 after the same team shipped him off to New York where some saw the lineup of Calgarians waiting to drive Jokinen to the airport so he wouldn't miss his flight to New York was backed all the way up to Red Deer.
The trade to New York had come shortly after the Flames missed out on the playoffs and was part of a massive overhaul-something like what has been happening in Toronto. Should Jokinen fail to meet expectations in Calgary once again, the only bright side of all this is that they got him for $6 million over two years, apparently about half of what he made the last time he played for them.
The other strange deal was Derek Boogaard being signed by the New York Rangers. This comes a year after the team gave Donald Brashear a ridiculous salary.
This time, they gave Boogaard $1.625 million to Boogaard, who as most know, will drop the gloves with anyone and is tough to beat.
They spend that kind of money on somebody to fight when their best player Marian Gaborik, still needs someone who can centre him on the Rangers' top line.
The one bright move from July 1 could be the Flyers' re-signing of the that brought them to a game-and-a-goal of winning the Stanley Cup.
The Flyers could be good again next year, but watch of for St. Louis, Washington, New York Islanders and who knows maybe the Leafs!
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