Saturday’s FTB: Remember when the Habs were the only team to lose to Arizona in regulation?

It’s Saturday night, and I’m Frederik Andersen years old today! The Toronto Maple Leafs are taking on the Montreal Canadiens, and I’ll be watching the game with some friends at Amsterdam Brewery’s Brewhouse. When I had a birthday cake last night I wished for Auston Matthews to return and bury the Habs again.

I blew out all the candles and everything. The pact has been fulfilled, universe, now pay up!

I know you already have the Oilers, Sabres and Habs all in the bottom 5 in the entire league, and you had Montreal be the only team in 21 games to lose to Arizona in regulation... those are both pretty great birthday gifts. But I specifically wished for a Leafs win over Vomit City!

ONTO THE LINKS!

The big news from yesterday was the sudden new contract signed between the Leafs and Josh “5 NHL games per season” Leivo. Katya looked into this puzzling contract here.

Katya also looked at how the Leafs fared in their latest installment of the “6 points in 5 games” goal. Spoilers: they did pretty fuckin’ good.

Seldo asks who wore #30 better... Bruce Gamble or Terry Sawchuk?

Josh Kloke at The Jock looked at how Tyler Bozak helped answer the question: Who Will Butcher sign as a free agent out of college?

MLHS recapped the Marlies’ week ahead of their weekend series vs Syracuse. (Waves to blogmom!)

Nafio previews the first CWHL games in China this weekend, including both the Toronto Furies and Markham Thunder.

AROUND THE NHL

The big news as far as anything that matters (read: the Leafs) is this bit of maybe-news:

If NHL revenues are as robust as Bettman said today, the salary cap will go way up next summer. Plausibly $80- to $82-million. Pretty interesting.

— James Mirtle (@mirtle) November 18, 2017

The 2017-2018 season had a cap ceiling of $75 million, so that could be a $5 million to $7 million increase. According to Cap Friendly, the Leafs go into next year with a projected cap hit of $48,969,167. With an $80 million cap ceiling, that would give them $31+ million in cap space.

They do have a lot of guys who will be free agents: JVR, Bozak, Komarov, Moore, Polak, Fehr and Lupul are all coming off the books as UFAs. Then there are the RFAs — William Nylander, Soshnikov, Carrick and Marincin.

You can look at comparable players and contracts they recently signed (Nylander and Pastrnak, JVR and Atkinson, etc) and their cap situation going into next year looks pretty good with that extra cap space. Hell, maybe they really do make a run at signing Tavares! (lolnope)

Happy Saturday everyone!

BUDS ALL DAY!

What cake is the best birthday cake?