I’m not saying getting rid of Kovalev, just that we could have easily put together a package that exceeded what Toronto had to offer. I know Leclaire has a high ceiling as a tender, but I don’t see him having that upper echelon play that Giguere can give you.

“Give it time. Giguere will fall back to Earth, and the Leafs will fall back to their basement play.”

300 points in 500 games with a Rocket Richard trophy sounds pretty awesome, especially at only 3.5M per season. We all know how that turned out. It’s always dangerous to base future predictions on past success.

You do make a good point about our history with older tenders. I guess I’m looking at how the Leafs have managed to field what you could class as Hall of Fame goaltenders when they were owning us in the playoffs. Not to say Jiggy is HoF worthy, but I’d say he is a cut above what we have in net when on his game.

I’m also not saying that the trade would have made sense, just that say circumstances were different we could have pulled the trigger. Say we’re sitting in 8th or 9th and didn’t go on the big win streak and Murray looks to shake things up in an effort to make the playoffs.

and Leclaire is 3M/year cheaper (or something like that). Jiggy played fantastic in his first two games (although he wasn’t really tested), but he’s not going to keep it up.

Interesting sidenote, though – is Cheechoo/Leclaire even a better deal for Anaheim? Remember that Tosk comes off the books next year.