The Maple Leafs continue to add some depth up front, announcing the signing of Jimmy Vesey to a one-year contract. The deal will pay the winger $900K.
The 27-year-old may be best remembered for choosing not to sign with Nashville who drafted him or Buffalo who dealt for his rights before embarking on a free agent tour that most college players get the opportunity to do. While he hasn’t become a core forward like teams had hoped, Vesey has been a capable secondary scorer over his four-year NHL career. After spending his first three seasons with the Rangers, he was traded to Buffalo last offseason but the fit wasn’t a great one as he managed just eight goals and 12 assists in 64 games after having at least 27 points in each year with New York. That certainly played a role in him going from a $2.275MM AAV on this last deal to less than half of that in this one.
Vesey will likely be given an opportunity to fill the vacancy opened up by Saturday’s trade of Andreas Johnsson to New Jersey although youngster Nick Robertson and KHL acquisition Alexander Barabanov are both likely to be in the mix for that spot as well.
Toronto still has winger Ilya Mikheyev (who filed for arbitration yesterday) and defenseman Travis Dermott to re-sign and cap space is limited no matter which players round out their roster. Accordingly, the Maple Leafs may still have some cap trimming to do in the coming days and weeks.
Remember when this dude thought he was gods gift to hockey in 2016
Bro I do. What a fall from grace
I remember when he had the right to choose his employer and then did so. Why so salty?
Im not salty. He just thought he was so much better than he really was. Imagine forcing your way to the Rangers just to be traded to Buffalo later on anyway.
Would rather have Clifford who signed for similar money in St.Louis
Clifford worth a 2nd rounder to you?
I think the leafs wanted Clifford back but that upgraded draft pick was likely a deal breaker unless he took league minimum
This is a hot take. Please enlighten us.
Clifford is a career 4th liner who spends more time in the box than on the ice, has no hockey IQ and no standout hockey skills other than his imposing physicality. He’s a goon who can skate just enough that he’s not a complete liability and can pot you 5-7 goals a year. Yippee!
Vesey is a Harvard grad & HBA winner who has 20-25 goal potential with the right line mates, is 1″ taller than Clifford while only weighing 9 lbs lighter, plays a smart sound game in what has been a middle-six role for the majority of his NHL career and has some potential for a top-six role if he can further refine his scoring & playmaking abilities a touch in the next few years. He can play up and down the lineup as needed while a guy like Clifford is someone who would make you visibly cringe if you saw anywhere but the 4th line in any meaningful capacity.
Vesey is 27 and still has some time to grow his game at the NHL level. He has suited up in 304 games thus far which follows right along the trajectory of the Leafs core 3 forwards Matthews (282), Marner (300) & Nylander (307) with whom he should see his fair share of reps this year. A guy like Vesey doesn’t sign for 900k for one year unless he plans on platforming himself by playing with the best players on the team.
Wow you’re making vesey out to a lot better player, vesey is a 4th liner 3rd on a team with now no depth
link to youtube.com
Watch that video and tell me if you still think he’s a fourth liner.
The guy has scored at least 16G in 3/4 seasons and only once has his team finished higher than 21st in GF/G. That was when he was a rookie playing minutes with Rick Nash & Derek Stepan on what I assume was the top line as you can see in the video. Vesey scored 16G and added 5 PPG & NYR ended up 4th in GF/G that year. He put up 5P in 12GP in the playoffs. In 304GP he AVG’s 14:30 TOI, so unless he takes a major step back he’s not playing on the 4th line. He may settle into a 3rd line role with the Leafs but I believe it’s in both his and The Leafs best interest’s to try to afford him every opportunity to play LW on one of the 2 top lines and I believe that’s why he (probably) turned more money down for a shot to play with some big dogs. For god’s sake Zach Hyman has 2 straight 20 goal season playing with Matthews/Marner/Nylander imagine what a guy like Vesey could do. He’s basically a bigger version of Hyman with better puck handling, shooting & awareness. His backhand is most exceptional. He’s better in almost every respect offensively than Hyman less maybe puck protection. And don’t get me started on Johnsson. God bless his work ethic but his awareness is lacking tremendously on both ends of the ice and makes too many mistakes to be considered a viable roster option for a legit contender.
All in all he is an upgrade in lineup over Johnsson and for someone to say they would rather have Clifford makes my brain hurt. By that logic Clifford should have replaced Johnsson next to Matthews and Marner because Clifford>Vesey>Johnsson. Anyways time will tell but Dubas is smarter and more prepared for his job than every user on this site combined. I just try to bring facts to the table because people can’t argue with those.
If he was really as good as you say you don’t think he would have got more money? There is a reason we were one of the only teams to go after him, I’ll take the majority of the gm’s take on vesey than yours or dubas who has locked up 4 forwards for half the cap and handcuffed himself to signing the likes of Simmonds,bogo and vesey
Yes definitely worth the second rounder to have Clifford in their lineup. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. This team needs toughness and they did not add enough. Clifford wanted to play in Toronto and filled a need. Subtracting Clifford and adding Simmons does not ADD toughness. And Brodie is barely tougher than Gardner. This was an unbelievably bad offseason for Dubas. After they make another early exit next year Dubas will be shown the door. And probably never get another GM job in the NHL. He’ll be remembered only marginally better than JFJ.
Cross your fingers and hope Dubas hires some cheap toughness from teams not making the playoffs when the time comes.
That’s the only strategy I can see him doing if he understands the concept of “toughness”.
I think earlier Tampa Bay and Maple Leafs teams show that finesse can get you to the playoffs, but not through them.
Name a tough guy on Tampa. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Maroon and Bogosian come to mind.
Wow. Stanley Cup means nothing I guess. After a first round route to Columbus the year befiore. See the “Janus” response.Le Sigh.
Wow. Stanley Cup means nothing I guess. After a first round route to Columbus the year before. See the “callingoutdummies247 ” response. Le Sigh.
Also who were the other SC finalist Dallas’ “tough guys”? Perry, Benn & Radulov?
If you cried about how we lacked toughness before this offseason you had a leg to stand on, now not so much. Simmonds>Maroon & Leafs actually signed Bogo. Vesey also brings a bigger body to the lineup than the feisty but diminutive Johnsson and has dropped the gloves more times than you probably are aware of.
Dubas has answered the bell and insulated his skilled guys with some face-punchers while avoiding robbing Peter to Pay Paul. To say that we don’t have enough “toughness” to make it past the first round after TBL & Dallas just made the SCF is counter-intuitive and frankly ignorant.
It’s not about fighter type guys. They have many guys that play with an edge. Cernak, shenn, Coleman, goodrow, Joseph, maroon, bogosian. It would be easier to make a list of the players that don’t play a tough game.
Poor Leaf fans have been so deprived of toughness, they no longer know what it means.
Dubas’ moves haven’t been terrible in vacuum, but they haven’t moved the needle more than an inch or two.
But most of his mistakes/questionable moves stem from the predictably disastrous choice to put so much cap into 4 forwards while starving the rest of the roster (particularly the blue line) of needed depth.
Do you really think Simmonds,vesey and Bogo are really going help? Simmonds is not even close to the player he used to be, bogo is fine if you have the likes of McDonough,hedman and cerenak around but I have no doubt they won’t help us succeed we got them because we pay 4 forwards half the cap
so what moves would you have made?