Ditching solid, classy Ken Klee for some semblance of value is exactly the sort of moderately tough decision I was advocating yesterday. Replacing him with Luke Richardson for the mind-warpingly outrageous potential cost of fourth and fifth round draft picks is exactly the sort of thing I was arguing against. Nothing against the guy, but he's 18 days shy of his 37th birthday. He was a healthy scratch for the Columbus freaking Blue Jackets as recently as November 25. Even the fifth rounder on its own is an insane price to pay for a player the Leafs simply don't need.
In case anyone's interested, Leafs' fourth, fifth, and lower round picks who have played for the big club this year are as follows: Jay Harrison, Tomas Kaberle, Staffan Kronwall, Alexei Ponikarovsky and Kyle Wellwood.
(Cross-posted to Tart Cider.)
The chances that a 5th round pick will become a player of significance (i.e. a regular player for 2 or more years) is very very slim. Maybe 5%, 10% max. Let's look at some of the 5th round picks from the late 1990's.
ReplyDelete1995: Vladimir Orszagh, Miikka Kiprusoff, Dale Purinton, Chris Mason, Jan Hrdina, Brent Johnson
1996: Jesse Boulerice
1997: Magnus Arvedsson, Jason Chimera
1998: Jaroslav Spacek, Andrew Raycroft, Mikael Samuelsson
1999: Ryan Miller
You have one all-star goalie in Kipprusoff and two more potentially pretty good goalies in Raycroft and Miller and some journeymen goalies in Mason,and Johnson. Arvedsson was a decent player for a few years, Spacek is a pretty solid defenseman and Samuelsson has looked good in Detroit this year but who knows if he will stick and Hrdina wasn't a bad player. And then you have several fringe players. But that is just 12 players over a 5 year span out of approximately 150 draft picks.
All that said, I would rather see Harrison or Kronwall get ice time over Richardson but with the injuries the Leafs have had having another experienced defenseman around isn't a bad thing.
Speaking of late round picks - Daniel Alfredsson was grabbed in the 6th round. If you have a good scouting staff, those late round selections can be pure gold.
ReplyDeleteKlee: $1.9 million
ReplyDeleteRichardson: $2.09 million
But both are unrestricted free agents at years end so it doens't matter towards next season and unless the Leafs are interested in trading for a salary (which they are not) it doesn't matter for this season either. To summarize, it really doesn't matter what their salaries are. Except to the morons in the Leafs media who will want to whine and complain about it because that is all they know how to do.