Although Brian Burke is far from done, this is what the Toronto Maple Leaf situation looks like as Burke takes the weekend off to celebrate July 4th. He has 18 players on contract for a total of $54.5 million. Which means there is about $5 left in cap space for 5 more players. However, he continues to dangle Tomas Kaberle on the trade market and conventional wisdom is the Jeff Finger will be a Marlie next season. That means that Burke potentially has $12.75 million for 7 more players. There are certainly many Leaf fans who would like to see Ilya Kovalchuk in Toronto and there are certainly the dollars there but I suspect Burke feels the amount of money and the length of his contract demands would burden the team. He is not Alex Ovechkin.
So today the Leaf lineup with looks like this:
Kessel - Kadri - Kulemin
Caputi - Grabovski - Versteeg
Hanson - Bozak - Armstrong
Brown - Mitchell - Orr
Kaberle - Phaneuf
Beauchemin - Komisarek
Gunnarsson - Schenn
Giguere - Gustavsson
It is not yet clear who will be the extra forwards or defensemen. Right now we may be looking at Keith Aulie on defense and Fredrik Sjostrom up front. This lineup would still have difficulty scoring and contending for a playoff spot. Add a Marc Savard or someone else of that calibre as well as another forward for Kaberle and the lineup will look more complete.
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