Leafs Choices... What to do...?

I have been going over this again and again. And I suspect I am not the only blogger. This issue is what to do with JVR? He is probably playing the best hockey in his career. The price would go through the roof right now. The question is, do we dare trade our best asset for the future?

The business side of me says absolutely; it would speed up the rebuild. The Leafs need to do this the right way, building up the assets as much as we can. The more picks and prospects, the better our chances are that they will pan out. As we know, predicting whether a prospect is ‘can't miss’ is a crap shoot. The more crap shots we get, the more future players we get.

So the next question about the Leafs is the Bernier play. What do they do with him? Bernier has one more year left on his contract, and Reimer is a UFA. So… what to do, what to do… Does Reimer deserve a contract offer? Which one do the Leafs keep? Or do they sign both? My pick is to trade Bernier; again, simply because we can get more assets for him.

Do the Leafs want to win this year? Obviously, they are not going to go public and admit they aren’t aiming to win. But let's face facts. No one wants to win this year. For the rebuild to be successful, it has to be painful. We have to keep the bare bones and sell off the rest to the highest bidder. It will get far uglier before it gets better.

Randy