David Clarkson

[ZBBM]

I don't follow the CBA so my question is is there a way to incentivize his retirement?  Would that even get his remaining salary off the cap?

No way to legally incentivize his retirement, no, but, it would get his cap hit off the books completely.

By that I meant sending him down a la Redden and hoping he gets the message someday that he's never coming back. But I suppose he has a no-move.

 

[bustaheims]

By that I meant sending him down a la Redden and hoping he gets the message someday that he's never coming back. But I suppose he has a no-move.

Yeah, that NMC makes that a no-go, and, really, that doesn't open up enough cap space on its own to make it a worthwhile move. It would really just create ~$4.3M in dead cap space. I'd just make him a healthy scratch for long stretches.

 

[slapshot]

We've already seen that he's been given the authority to make similar moves with other teams under the MLSE umbrella. He made some pretty swift moves in dealing with the Raptors' front office.

Yeah, but the Raptors were a well acknowledged mess where "dealing" with them was, I think, assumed to be a major and immediate part of the job for whoever got hired and, even then, I think conventional wisdom might say that firing Colangelo when Leiweike/the organization did might have been a year too late. The Leafs, at least superficially, aren't in a similar situation.

Even then, though, the way Leiweike dealt with the team was fairly conventional. They didn't go out and hire John Hollinger or Daryl Morey or a big analytics guy. They hired the reigning NBA executive of the year and, until the Rudy Gay trade turned the entire team around, seemed to be fully intent on scrapping things down and rebuilding. That speaks more to patience than anything else.

There's missing the playoffs and there's leading the team to historic levels of defensive ineptness that played a serious hand in them blowing a 9 point cushion in the month or so of the season. This isn't just a coach that's missed the playoffs. This is a coach that did so in spectacular fashion without being able to show any signs of correcting the massive systemic flaws the team has had all season.

I think that opinion, though, comes kind of from an internet bubble where things like the historic nature of the Leafs ineptitude defensively are a given. I don't think that in the larger hockey world the Leafs missing the playoffs is going to be seen as spectacular in any way. They weren't a Blackhawks level team that missed the playoffs, they won't miss the playoffs by 40 points. Yeah, the late season fall is dramatic but not historically so.

I appreciate that the "shots against and for are the be all and end all" thing is taking a strong root here but to argue that Leiweke feels that way, or is going to make a decision from that perspective, doesn't hold to what we've seen so far. The Leafs had similar issues in the off-season, they weren't addressed. Nothing changed during the slump earlier in the season. Leiweke has seemed pretty content to let the team operate as it has when if he bought into the analytics that you do there were lots of times and opportunities to make changes accordingly.

I gotta agree with you here....if the leafs miss the playoffs it will be disappointing, but I certainly wouldn't classify it as a historical failure. I looked at Ottawa and Toronto as being pretty even coming into the season....yet Ottawa has been equally as bad over their last 10 games (2-5-3)....their season was a failure but it wouldn't be classified as historic, and neither should the Leafs.  Leafs were supposed to be a playoff bubble team....and they are a playoff bubble team.  Everyone here would agree they were pretty lucky to have a 9 pt cushion.  I will admit they?re timing to go on a losing streak couldn?t  have come at worse part of the season

What someone with perspective? I must need to up my medication.

 

[ZBBM]

By that I meant sending him down a la Redden and hoping he gets the message someday that he's never coming back. But I suppose he has a no-move.

Yeah, that NMC makes that a no-go, and, really, that doesn't open up enough cap space on its own to make it a worthwhile move. It would really just create ~$4.3M in dead cap space. I'd just make him a healthy scratch for long stretches.

Yeah, I wasn't even concerned about the cap space implications, just wondered what could be done to make it clear to him that he's not playing a role with the team going forward.  Scratching would probably be the closest.

More realistically, I think putting him on the 4th line and giving him less than 5 mins a game is probably the best.  That, or going to him and telling him that if he wants to play at all, he needs to become a PK specialist.

 

[Bullfrog]

By that I meant sending him down a la Redden and hoping he gets the message someday that he's never coming back. But I suppose he has a no-move.

Yeah, that NMC makes that a no-go, and, really, that doesn't open up enough cap space on its own to make it a worthwhile move. It would really just create ~$4.3M in dead cap space. I'd just make him a healthy scratch for long stretches.

Not only that, but if I'm Clarkson, why would that force me into retirement? I'd just keep playing in the AHL and collecting my very, very large paycheques.

 

[louisstamos]

I was talking with my guys at hockey last night, and we came up with a very interesting theory - in recent years, we've had a lot of star players from the Toronto area (the Rick Nash's of the world come to mind) who have either hinted or stated that they don't want to come to Toronto because of the amount of pressure they'd have on them.  Could that be a reason why some people/the media are taking it easy on Clarkson?  People are treating him with kid gloves because he is a hometown guy who's come home, and people are trying to ensure this stigma of us eating our own is displaced.

 

[princedpw]

I was talking with my guys at hockey last night, and we came up with a very interesting theory - in recent years, we've had a lot of star players from the Toronto area (the Rick Nash's of the world come to mind) who have either hinted or stated that they don't want to come to Toronto because of the amount of pressure they'd have on them.  Could that be a reason why some people/the media are taking it easy on Clarkson?  People are treating him with kid gloves because he is a hometown guy who's come home, and people are trying to ensure this stigma of us eating our own is displaced.

No, I don't believe this.  I believe the news media is driven primarily by short-term thinking.  They will write whatever story they think will sell a newspaper tomorrow.  They don't have an interest in banding together to make the Leafs look good over the long term.

 

[Britishbulldog]

I was talking with my guys at hockey last night, and we came up with a very interesting theory - in recent years, we've had a lot of star players from the Toronto area (the Rick Nash's of the world come to mind) who have either hinted or stated that they don't want to come to Toronto because of the amount of pressure they'd have on them.  Could that be a reason why some people/the media are taking it easy on Clarkson?  People are treating him with kid gloves because he is a hometown guy who's come home, and people are trying to ensure this stigma of us eating our own is displaced.

The last Leafs game I watched on Game Center this week the announcers from the other team mentioned on air that Clarkson told them that the biggest stress on Clarkson in Toronto wasn't his point totals being so low with such a huge contract, dealing with the media and fans in Toronto because he is playing where he grew up BUT it was the constant hassle his family/friends go through with people approaching them because of Clarkson not meeting expectations. 

That would drive me nuts as well by the way.  Almost to a breaking point.

 

[princedpw]

Buying him out over the summer would be a poor move, I think.  It costs too much on the cap for too long make it worthwhile.  We simply have to hope that he plays better next year and the year after.  Let's hope he is able to turn things around and play like a 15-20 goal, 30-40 point player who helps out our 3rd line.  That kind of player can be worth 3.5 million or so going forward, perhaps more as a UFA.  If so, we'd be taking a 1-2 million hit on his contract.  If we get lucky, he'll revert to his NJ form and play like he's almost worth the contract for the next couple of years.  But in any case, I'd rather take the hit on his contract now than push it off for 12 years going forward.  I'm just not a guy who likes going in to debt.

 

[Kin]

I was talking with my guys at hockey last night, and we came up with a very interesting theory - in recent years, we've had a lot of star players from the Toronto area (the Rick Nash's of the world come to mind) who have either hinted or stated that they don't want to come to Toronto because of the amount of pressure they'd have on them.  Could that be a reason why some people/the media are taking it easy on Clarkson?  People are treating him with kid gloves because he is a hometown guy who's come home, and people are trying to ensure this stigma of us eating our own is displaced.

I don't buy the idea that the media are taking it easy on him. It's just not much of an angle to push past the 30 game mark once it becomes clear that, win or lose, Clarkson isn't going to have much to do with it. What do people want the media to do? Add "...and, yet again, Clarkson wasn't very good" after every sentence? Nobody is defending his performance, they're just not talking about it because it isn't changing.

I'm sure it seems unfair to some that the guys who are intermittently good get more criticism than someone who is consistently bad but I think those people kind of need to familiarize themselves with the definition of the word "news".

 

[L K]

I was talking with my guys at hockey last night, and we came up with a very interesting theory - in recent years, we've had a lot of star players from the Toronto area (the Rick Nash's of the world come to mind) who have either hinted or stated that they don't want to come to Toronto because of the amount of pressure they'd have on them.  Could that be a reason why some people/the media are taking it easy on Clarkson?  People are treating him with kid gloves because he is a hometown guy who's come home, and people are trying to ensure this stigma of us eating our own is displaced.

I don't buy the idea that the media are taking it easy on him. It's just not much of an angle to push past the 30 game mark once it becomes clear that, win or lose, Clarkson isn't going to have much to do with it. What do people want the media to do? Add "...and, yet again, Clarkson wasn't very good" after every sentence? Nobody is defending his performance, they're just not talking about it because it isn't changing.

I'm sure it seems unfair to some that the guys who are intermittently good get more criticism than someone who is consistently bad but I think those people kind of need to familiarize themselves with the definition of the word "news".

I guess, but the Toronto media are pretty good at creating vendetta's against certain players and attacking them relentlessly.  I mean stuff like calling Reimer's Mom...or showing up Bryan McCabe's doorstep and hounding him when he was pretty clearly going through some personal heath issues with his wife. They got a little nasty with how they were treating her. 

When they want to be the Toronto media can be complete A-holes.  Clarkson seems like the prime target for one of those attack pieces to happen and they have pretty much left him alone all year, and if anything have waffled on puff pieces about not giving up on him.  Something has me thinking that the same thing wouldn't be afforded to a player who went by the name of Clarkov.

 

[Kin]

I guess, but the Toronto media are pretty good at creating vendetta's against certain players and attacking them relentlessly.  I mean stuff like calling Reimer's Mom...or showing up Bryan McCabe's doorstep and hounding him when he was pretty clearly going through some personal heath issues with his wife. They got a little nasty with how they were treating her. 

When they want to be the Toronto media can be complete A-holes.  Clarkson seems like the prime target for one of those attack pieces to happen and they have pretty much left him alone all year, and if anything have waffled on puff pieces about not giving up on him.  Something has me thinking that the same thing wouldn't be afforded to a player who went by the name of Clarkov.

I don't deny that certain writers can be jerks(although I maintain that calling Reimer's mom and asking "how's your son?" or whatever when she was more or less willing to talk about it doesn't really qualify) but whenever I see these things that try to aggregate "the media" or describe them as having a singular agenda/voice...I don't know that it every strikes me as being super accurate. There's so much media surrounding the team that if someone is looking for someone being really mean to Dion Phaneuf or whoever then they can find it but it doesn't mean that there's not other opinions floating out there.

Like I said, I'd absolutely agree that you'll find more opinions out there that criticize, say, Kessel or Phaneuf over the last few weeks than Clarkson but I don't think that can be attributed to "kid gloves" so much as Clarkson just being a non-factor.

 

[Britishbulldog]

Buying him out over the summer would be a poor move, I think.  It costs too much on the cap for too long make it worthwhile.  We simply have to hope that he plays better next year and the year after.  Let's hope he is able to turn things around and play like a 15-20 goal, 30-40 point player who helps out our 3rd line.  That kind of player can be worth 3.5 million or so going forward, perhaps more as a UFA.  If so, we'd be taking a 1-2 million hit on his contract.  If we get lucky, he'll revert to his NJ form and play like he's almost worth the contract for the next couple of years.  But in any case, I'd rather take the hit on his contract now than push it off for 12 years going forward.  I'm just not a guy who likes going in to debt.

That's basically what I have been hoping as well. A little lower expectations though.  I was thinking that Clarkson scoring 10 - 15 goals and 100 + pims, throwing hits and screening in front of the net.  Yeah, really that would be a $3.5 MIL player which kind of hurts cap-wise but since it cost no assets to it isn't quite as bad at $5.25 MIL.

 

[Madferret]

"How do you feel about pretending to retire?"

 

[Mike1]

I would try to get rid of him. Some teams will believe that the pressure or contract got him(excuses excuses), maybe Nonis can capitalize on that & find a deal. Lots of teams have overrated Clarkson for a long time...maybe Lou wants to bring back his boy.

All I know is this, you keep him & he has another season like this one, you have him for 5 more years guaranteed. Is Nonis thinking that way though? or is he going to be the prototypical GM & think just because he signed him, he isn't going to make himself look bad by getting rid of a player after a year?

 

[Peter D.]

Is it safe to suggest Clarkson is the worst free agent signing in Leafs' history? :-\

 

[louisstamos]

Is it safe to suggest Clarkson is the worst free agent signing in Leafs' history? :-\

Recent history for sure.  Jason Blake had his share of criticism too, but he at least produced somewhat respectably, and his contract was only a 5 year deal.

 

[mc]

One thing I admired about Clarkson after scoring that goal, not even a hint of happiness or joy. That tells me this slump he has been in has been weighing heavily on him.

 

[Highlander]

If the Loafs do happen to fall into the playoffs, then Clarksons goal is worth 5.7zillion dollars as this game probably wouldn't have been a win without it.

 

[L K]

If the Loafs do happen to fall into the playoffs, then Clarksons goal is worth 5.7zillion dollars as this game probably wouldn't have been a win without it.

Unfortunately, the other 72 games where he didn't show up at all would be a good justification for why they were in that position in the first place.  It's been said before, but the notion of "playoff warrior" seems like a bit of an overstated quality.  Part of being a good hockey player is being good throughout the season AND playoffs.  A guy who sucks during the regular season and steps up his game in the playoffs should be an example of a player who should be criticized, not praised.

It's one thing if a guy adds a small element to his game in the postseason (plays more physical, plays through injury, blocks an extra shot or two) because those are plays that might be deleterious to their play over an 82 game schedule.  But floating for the regular season only to show that you aren't a floater in the postseason is completely unacceptable.