There are two ways to look at the Maple Leafs’ signing of Ryan Reaves for three years after they appear to have made him one of their top free agency priorities.
First, it’s a low-risk bet on a veteran who has a defined role and knows how to fill it. Reaves is as close as the NHL is today to an old-school enforcer, the man who is there to make sure the other team stays in line. He doesn’t have to fight to do the job, but he will, and opponents know it. The Maple Leafs have a lot of skill at the top of the roster but can be pushed around, and traditional hockey mindset says that this means there must be some trouble at the bottom end.
At three years and a $1.35 million cap, Reaves will not exceed the Leafs’ salary cap, especially as the cap increases over the next few years. And while he’s 36, the skills the Leafs are acquiring won’t diminish with age. If it doesn’t work, it didn’t cost that much. If it works out, he could be one of Toronto’s most popular players, the Tie Domi of a new era.
That’s the positive aspect. do you buy it
I get the impression a lot of Leaf fans don’t. others are see that too. And that brings us to the second perspective on this step.
This version starts like this: Ryan Reaves is no good. Aside from the intimidation factor, he doesn’t do enough to earn a spot on a competing team’s roster. And while he can fight, he doesn’t as often as you think. Maybe he doesn’t have to, and that’s the whole point. But he can’t protect the Leafs’ stars from Matthew Tkachuk and Tom Wilson unless he’s on the ice with them, and he won’t. When the playoffs come and temperatures rise, will he scare anyone while he’s on the bench?
Perhaps. That’s the bet the Leafs are making. And they’re not the first, because whatever you may think of Reaves’ numbers, he’s played plenty of playoff hockey for multiple teams over the years. This isn’t a guy who gets relegated to the press box as soon as the playoffs start. He’s seen the second round more than once, and that alone makes him an outlier on this Leafs team.
Ryan Reaves for three years is too long.
Ryan Reaves is $1.3 million too much.
The added value listed here is generous, as I’ve set a floor below which Reaves’ game is well below. pic.twitter.com/togsrfAu32– dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) July 1, 2023
In the end, your feelings about this commitment probably boil down to one question: What makes Ryan Reaves different from Wayne Simmonds, Kyle Clifford, Matt Martin, and many other people the Leafs have hired to do this job over the years? ? All of these guys did their best and had their moments, and none of them did much to make the Leafs a tougher team to play against. Now it’s Reaves’ turn, and you might think it’ll work this time because he’s the scariest guy of them all. Or maybe you think that won’t be the case because it’s not 1992 anymore and the old school way of thinking has long since stopped working.
The other name that matters here is Brad Treliving, the brand new boss who’s making his first mark on a roster he doesn’t seem particularly keen on destroying. When this move comes under a GM who’s been in office for a while, you might shrug. It’s a quatrain, settle down in Toronto, not everything is a crisis. But we don’t have much to say about how Treliving plans to tackle this underperforming Leafs team. Everything is under scrutiny, at least until we get an idea of what he’s up to.
We know this: There will be moments when Leaf fans will love Ryan Reaves. In a long and drawn out regular season that borders on insignificance, he will have his chance to give fans something to cheer about. If enough of those moments come together to somehow lead to a change in the vibe of the team, then maybe that’ll work, or at least come close enough to being okay.
The question is whether he can make a difference once the playoffs begin. Other people have tried. It never seems to work, not with this bunch. Treliving seems ready to try again. Feed it back to borrow a twist. If it fails again, it’s not because Reaves didn’t give it his all. It will be about how Treliving diagnosed his team, what he thinks will fix the problem and how he intends to go about the job.
We’ll know more about that in a few days than we do now. But we do know a little, and that’s that Treliving is willing to use its precious Cap space to try and buy something his new team could never earn on their own. Let’s see if it works.
(Photo: David Berding/Getty Images)