Maple Leafs roster cuts surprise just about everyone.

Some big surprises from the Leafs.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Maple Leafs roster cuts surprise just about everyone.
Kostas Lymperopoulos/CSM/Zuma

The Toronto made their final roster cuts on Monday and to be perfectly honest I was more than a little taken by surprise at some of the names who were cut and some of the names that were retained, and I do not believe I was alone in that sentiment. 

The Leafs made three roster cuts on Monday and although these are the final cuts prior to the start of the regular season there may still be one more in the future, although I will get to that in just a minute. The three men who were cut today were defenseman Connor Carrick, a surprise to one one, goaltender Calvin Pickard, again not much of a surprise, and goaltender Curtis McElhinney, this one being much more surprising. We knew one of the goalies would be going down today but there were a lot of reasons to suspect that it would not be McElhinney.

Earlier during the week we had heard talk of the Maple Leafs potentially trading three of their players, goaltender Garret Sparks, forward Josh Leivo and aforementioned defenseman Connor Carrick. Of the three players who were potentially on the trading block only Carrick now finds himself placed on the waiver wire which does gives us some clues about Toronto's mindset regarding certain players. 

Now to be clear this is pure speculation on my part but if I had to guess why Leivo and Sparks remain on the roster today it's likely due to the fact that the Leafs believe they would have been claimed by rival organizations on waivers. The Leafs may believe that they can still orchestrate a trade for one or more of these players and as a result they may want to hold off before taking the risk of losing them for nothing on waivers. The other possibility however is that the Leafs simply feel they bring more to the table that the players who were cut from the roster. Certainly Sparks being significantly younger than McElhinney makes him a much more viable long term option for the Leafs and I can see why they would opt to keep him.

Perhpas most surprising of all however is the one player who was not cut today, a player that seemingly everyone had penciled in as the player most likely to be cut from the roster. 26 year old defenseman Martin Marincin was the player I thought would be the first to get cut given the current crop of defensemen on the Leafs roster, and more specifically defesnemen who shoot from the left side. The Leafs are shallow on the right side and based on that alone it would seemingly make more sense to cut Marincin and keep Carrick, but there's a reason that Kyle Dubas is general manager of the Maple Leafs and I am not. 

That's not to say that Marincin does not eventually get cut however, there is another factor here that will very likely lead to one more roster cut. Forward William Nylander is currently not on the Leafs roster due to his contract status and if he does eventually sign a new deal that will necessitate one more cut from the Leafs.

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