New Leaf GM showing his green-side

After a difficult week in which the Leafs lost 3 in a row, pressure is being put on Leafs new GM Steve Vendetti to possibly make some moves.

In their latest game, the leafs lost 5-3 to the Canucks. And with that, are now 3 points out of a playoff spot. It is early to start talking about that, and when you are hanging around with teams like the defending cup champs Tampa Bay, maybe its not so bad.

17 games in and the Leafs have an uninspiring 6-9-3 record. If one player could be singled out for their recent play, it could be their starting goalie Evgeni Nabokov who has gone 5W 6L 1T 3.37 GAA and .867 Save %. Could the team be relying too heavily on him? He played fantastic all of last season but has faltered often, having difficulty finishing games which is truly troubling.

As far as options go, the Leafs dont have many. They sit practically maxed out on the salary cap, so bringing in top talent is out of the question, smaller deals that focus on the 2nd and third lines seem to be where they need to work on. An interesting list of names came up from the Leafs website, which stated these players were all available....

NEW Trade Block Russ Bartlett(c) Petr Mika(c) Geoff Sanderson(lw) Glen Metropolit(lw) Brian Leetch(d) Nathan Dempsey(d) and Lubomir Sekeras(d) Petr Svoboda(d)Sami Salo(d)

Guys like Leetch and Sanderson caught our attention. We figure they need scoring help on LW and Centre. Not sure what, if any, will they get for these guys that can keep them under the cap. If things continue this way, look for them to unload some bigger contracts and start to look inward at their draft picks. The team has all of their own picks, plus the WIld's first and 2nd as well. Maybe re-shuffling this squad is the right thing to do, however the new gm really hasnt gotten a feel for how to value things in this league. People are quick to forget that hes only had roughly 30 games under his belt and this is his first FHL simmed league, which takes some time to get a handle on.

On a good note, there was evidence they did try to move a few players, but for whatever reason that team stopped replying to email requests. Im certain its hard for him to learn the value system without feedback. We hope for his sake the other gms in the league arent like this. In the same week, the team's main computer died too, so to say its been a frustrating time is putting it mildly im sure.

Next up, the Devils.......this might get uglier than it already is. I cant look.