Nattering With E and CHEL S3 #7: Everybody Moves Hall Of Fame

Eric (0:00)

What up world, it's your boy E coming at you from the Nattering With E studios. Today, we have an episode of Nattering With E, featuring Eric Freed's and his pals.

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Welcome back to dads. Step sons. Girlfriend's, brother's, cousin's favorite. Hockey podcast, it's Nattering, Ian, Chill. It's Eric, it's Torrey. Hey! So, we're already at episode seven. We would have I would have. probably had more had I not gone on vacation for a couple of weeks.

Torrey (1:18)

Yeah, damn you.

Eric (1:19)

Yeah, man. It was funny.

Before I left, I swear to God, dear listeners, that Torrey says to me right after our last episode, you know everything's going to happen when you go, right? And I'm like, nah, it's been a quiet season. We'll be okay when I get back. And what happened? Everything happened. Hellebuck traded, Kutra wants out, asking out. Fighting's up. The Hall of Fame is this coming weekend. So we're recording on Friday the 6th of November. This will go up on Saturday the 7th of November.

There's rule changes. There's talk of like more expansion. There's something called a tagging rule that's preventing the Leafs from calling up their players because they already have their cap strapped for next year, which is, it's year one. I'll start with that actually. It's year one of Chayka Sandin. And we've seen Chayka rebuild the team pretty much. And now we're also seeing like him go from, oh my God, this is great to, this guy's going to screw up our team. And like when he gets, when he eventually gets fired, because every Leaf GM gets fired within like, what, four or five years, Torrey?

Torrey (2:44)

About that, yeah, eventually. They all have a shelf life from the moment they get hired.

Eric (2:48)

So after that, you can already see how screwed the team's going to be given like these tagging rules and how they're already up against next year's cap. Not even this year's cap, next year's cap, because of long-term IR, apparently that salary, that dead cap space counts towards next year's salary cap.

Torrey (3:10)

Well, there's two rules. There's the overage rule, which is linked to the LTIR, and then there is the tagging rule, which is essentially like the tag of your contract extending beyond this season. So a guy like in that Martenko deal, a guy like Merz Lincolns, he's a free agent at the end of the year, so he doesn't apply. Anyone whose contracts are expiring or don't have an extension beyond this year, count in that number. And these are the things that I find very interesting because I had no idea, and as these things come out, we all get an opportunity to see further into the CBA and see intricacies that come along with it.

But yeah, I think that in that trade, you look at a guy like Miles Wood, he's signed beyond the year. So we do have a few guys like Sizzens and Joshua, whatever that are all this year and next year.

I feel like the next trade that's to happen is probably going to be one of our guys that have term for somebody else's defensive, comparable within a roster structure, that's expiring contract. And a lot of the times those guys aren't available until the end of the year, sorry, to the trade deadline. So after the holidays into the next year, the 2027 So I think that we might see some more action then. But I think that's also why we're seeing a little bit of an audition for like Joshua and stuff and some of these other guys to see where they can actually play, where they can be elevated to, and how much they actually bring value to this current structure of the Leafs Cap situation.

Eric (4:54)

Yeah, I understand. Yeah, it's interesting too that we're now finding out about us as fans learning about the CBA and so forth through various podcasts. And also just now we got to research it ourselves. But the reason I bring that up is because I remember they got Miles Wood as part of that Marchenko deal.

As you guys may recall, Marchenko was traded for Matthew Nyes, Emil Andre, Steven Lorenz, and a second round pick for Kira Marchenko, Elvis Merzlikin and Miles Wood.

And apparently shortly after that, the Leafs were trying to flip Miles Wood, nobody would take that contract. And I was like, oh, that's so weird that they would grab this guy and not even give him a chance. Like, what's the deal? And now we find out about like a month later. Actually, the reason we were trying to flip this guy is because he screws our cap next year because of these tagging rules. And so we're like, we got to get them off the books. So I'm like, ah, that makes more sense.