The Leafs finished last season ninth in team save percentage, meaning after years of wandering in the wilderness they have finally solved their goaltending problem. But nothing is simple in Toronto and even the team's biggest strength comes with plenty of tough questions.

The Maple Leafs problem isn't scoring goals, it's keeping them out. But after being a top-10 team in goals scored from 2011-2013, the Leafs were middle of the pack last season suggesting defence isn't the only area in need of an upgrade.

The Leafs rely heavily on Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk and many nights live and die with their power play because apart from those two first liners they have trouble generating chances at even strength. A total revamp of the defence is the first priority this off-season but so too is creating a more balanced attack up front. Thankfully, the forwards need more of a tweak than a gut job.

Despite great goaltending, the Leafs allowed the fifth most goals in the league last season. Sadly, that isn't surprising. The Leafs haven't been better than 18th in goals allowed since the start of Lockout I.

Finally, they have some goaltending, so the bulk of the work will come in revamping the defence (and hopefully firing Randy Carlyle). It won't be easy, but there are plenty of options out there, many of which don't include trading Jake Gardiner.

The next great Chicago Blackhawks yard sale is tentatively scheduled for summer 2015. At that time both Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are unrestricted free agents and keeping them both is going to make the Hawks cap situation very interesting.

After winning the Stanley Cup in 2010, the Hawks were gutted in the off-season, unloading Dustin Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg, and Andrew Ladd (among others) in trades, walking away from Antti Niemi's contract in arbitration, and letting useful bit parts like John Madden and Adam Burish walk in free agency. In other words, the Hawks lost a first-pairing defenceman, a No. 1 goalie, two top-six forwards, and a whole lot of depth. No wonder it took two years for the Blackhawks to get back to the top.

Last summer's post-championship off-season didn't hurt the Hawks quite as much, with far fewer significant pieces departing, but the Hawks' depth was still hurt. Chicago dealt Dave Bolland and Michael Frolik in trades, and lost Ray Emery and Viktor Stalberg to free agency.

Expect the next Chicago sell-off to look more like the post-2010 Cup trade bonanza rather than last year's shuffling, because Toews and Kane are going to bring in monster salaries and everyone else is going to feel the squeeze.

With the upcoming end to the Stanley Cup playoffs, rumour time is ramping up, and the latest report indicates the Leafs are one of three teams in the running for the LA Kings' Jonathan Bernier.

GM Dean Lombardi told Bernier he owed the young netminder a chance to be a starter somewhere else, and has begun exploring trade options for the 2006 11th overall pick.

Much like the rumoured Miikka Kiprusoff trade at the deadline, the deal makes little sense for the Maple Leafs.

Unlike last year, this year's free agent market hasn't produced a feeding frenzy like everyone expected. Zach Parise and Ryan Suter got paid, but no team has taken the Florida Panthers approach of overpaying every average player available and hoping it's enough for the playoffs (I still can't believe it was for Florida).

Sure, the Flames overpaid both Dennis Wideman and the soon-to-regress-terribly Jiri Hudler, but that's just the Flames doing Flamesy things. Jay Feaster doesn't think he overpaid either of those players; in his mind the Flames got a steal. It will be interesting to see what the team does when the cap drops from $70 million. I want a camera there when someone tells Feaster he's over the cap by a good $5 million.

Yesterday at the Good Point I wrote about whether the big hold up on the UFA-front is due to the CBA that will expire at the end of the summer. I also speculate about whether a certain Tim Connolly, and players of his ilk, can be traded (hint: yes).

"Trade the pick!? That would require an ability to do more than sit around and pray for the lottery."

A couple of years ago Scott Cullen of TSN wrote a couple great articles breaking down the value of draft picks. It basically broke down how likely a team was to draft a quality player from certain spots in the draft. Amazingly, even if a team owns one of the first three picks there is only a 60 percent chance that player turns out to be at least a top-6 forward or top-4 defenceman. 60 percent! That's crazy.

Here's a graph I made showing how likely a player is to develop into a top-6 forward or top-6 defenceman based on when they are drafted in the first round. After round one the chances are less than 10 percent.

Likelihood of a first round pick becoming at least a top-6 forward or top-4 defenceman.

He also looked at the chances of a player suiting up for at least 100 games in his career. After the first round even that minimal accomplishment is a pretty difficult feat to achieve. In conclusion: drafting is hard!

Likelihood of a draft pick playing at least 100 games in the NHL.

I've used this data to take a look at when it is best for teams to trade up or down in the draft. You can read more at The Good Point.

Maple Leafs fans have been spoiled. That might sound funny after the team has failed to made the playoffs for eight years, but it's true.

After years of lamenting the loss of Tuukka Rask, or bemoaning the missed opportunity of dealing Tomas Kaberle for Jeff Carter and a first-round pick, the Leafs' fortunes in the trade market have improved drastically.

After taking a couple months hiatus, I am back writing for The Good Point. I should have a piece out every other Thursday.

Today I wrote about the sorry state of the Columbus Blue Jackets. The vultures are certainly circling as the team rots in last place, and plenty of Leafs fans have turned their dreams of Bobby Ryan and Ryan Getzlaf into dreams of Jeff Carter and Rick Nash.

According to Sportsnet reporter John Shannon, close friends of Nash are saying the star winger is willing to waive his no-trade clause, but won't outright ask for a trade. Whether true or not, it has certainly fueled the speculation that Nash is on his way out of Columbus.

Elliotte Friedman of CBC made an excellent point in his 30-thoughts column this week, saying that with the Blue Jackets hosting the All-Star game next season, how can they trade Nash beforehand? Who is going to get the home fans excited?

In my article for The Good Point I'm actually defending the Blue Jackets and saying that a rebuild now might be one of the worst moves the franchise can make. Seeing how Columbus is pretty much the antithesis to a model expansion franchise they probably won't heed my advice.

Burke explaining that the Leafs do, in fact, occasionally draft in the first round.

When Brian Burke traded two first- and one second-round pick for Phil Kessel, the prevailing thought was that Burke was foolish; you don't rebuild a team by trading away your high draft picks.

Burke boldly declared he was too impatient for a traditional rebuild and that under his watch the Leafs would undergo a radical on-the-fly rebuild. The Leafs weren't going to tank year in, year out, slowly building a team with the best young prospects available each June.

People were outwardly skeptical or the brash GM.

The Leafs began their rebuild shortly before Burke was named GM in 2008, as Cliff Fletcher took over for the deposed John Ferguson Jr. Fletcher acquired a few mid to late draft picks at the deadline and then traded up in the draft to take Luke Schenn, before fleecing the Canadiens for Mikhail Grabovski.

But aside from those two players, plus Tomas Kaberle and Nik Antropov, Burke was left with a roster deprived of nearly all talent, and saddled with seemingly unmovable contracts like Jason Blake's, which still had the next three seasons and $12 million on it.

At the same time, the Edmonton Oilers were about to embark on their own rebuild after finishing the 2008-09 season in 11th place in the Western Conference.

Over the next three years the two teams took different strategies to bring respectability back to their once proud franchises. The Oilers ended up adopting the more traditional tank hard and draft high method, while the Leafs managed to hold onto only one of their own first round picks.

Critics of Brian Burke and the Leafs pointed to Edmonton, proclaiming that the Oilers, on account of their proper rebuild, would become a better team sooner than the Leafs. Eventually, the armchair GMs said, the Leafs too would have to follow Edmonton as Burke's method was doomed to failure.

Well, three years have passed, and it is Toronto who has taken the first major step forward, sitting 7th in the Eastern Conference. In comparison, the Oilers once again sit in their customary lottery position, and can only console themselves by fact that drafting high will pay off eventually... or so they hope.

So, February was a crazy month here in Leafs Nation, right? Who would have thought that this team would be making a charge for the final playoff spot after suffering through multiple death spirals throughout the season. The Leafs went a brutal 8-15-3 in November and December and made everyone hate their lives before giving a slight glimmer of hope in January with an outstanding 6-6-1 record. And then everything turned around. The classic Leafs move of turning it on when everyone has counted you out and the pressure is non-existent is in full effect. And like some idiot who never learns from the past I love every minute of it!

Almost immediately after Jonathan Toews hoisted the Stanley Cup for the Chicago Blackhawks the vultures descended upon the team and began to pillage the champs. Chicago’s cap crunch was well documented and every team with a competent GM knew there were players to be had on the cheap.

The Hawks have already traded Dustin Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Brent Sopel, Andrew Ladd, and Kris Versteeg from their championship roster and almost lost RFA Niklas Hjalmarsson to the San Jose Sharks. Plus, John Madden, who is a UFA, won’t be re-signed. Additionally, Antti Niemi is going to arbitration and will certainly receive a large raise from the $800,000 he made last year. If the contract he’s awarded is too large it is entirely possible that the Hawks will walk away from the decision and attempt to sign another goalie for a cheaper salary.

Even after the Hawks bury Christobal Huet’s $5.625 million in the minors they will have a very small amount of money to fill out at least 5 roster spots. According to Tim Sassone of Chicago’s Daily Herald, the Hawks have 15 players under contract for $59.3 million (including Stanley Cup bonuses), while the cap limit is $59.4 million. Without Huet, Chicago's cap space isn’t even $6 million.

The Hawks will still be one of the best teams in the league next year because they have Kane, Toews, Hossa, Sharp, Bolland, Keith, Seabrook, and Campbell, but they will find it very hard to repeat as Stanley Cup Champions because they lack the tremendous depth that made them so successful last season. It’s also entirely possible that the Hawks will have to trade another player like Sharp to get under the cap, so I don’t see them repeating.

With the Hawks set to slip from their lofty perch it seems the Western Conference will send a completely different team to the Stanley Cup Final. It won’t be San Jose because even though they’ll be good, they’ll still be San Jose. The best team in the Western Conference, and likely the entire NHL, will be the most overrated team of the past two seasons - a team which is now probably underrated due to two straight second round beat-downs.

With the advent of social media there are new and easier ways for people to stay connected. This also means that there are new and easier means of staying connected with your ex. Or should I say creeping on your ex. Before you had to hide in the bushes outside your ex’s house to find out what was going on. Now all you need to do is check out any scandalous pictures from the previous weekend on Facebook.

Where can I possibly be going with such a creepy intro? Of course I’m going to go through a rundown of all the ex-Leafs who were fortunate enough to get out of Toronto and actually make it into the playoffs this year. How did they fare this post-season? No need to hide out in any bushes, just read on.

This year’s trade deadline was especially boring despite having a record 31 trades involving 55 players. The most exciting trade was Wojtek Wolski (the next Polish Prince?) for Peter Mueller – not exactly the most riveting trade. However, the lack of intrigue was not totally surprising. The major players (such as Kovalchuk and Phaneuf) moved prior to the deadline, which left only secondary players available. Put it this way, the most sought after player at the deadline was Ray Whitney. Not exactly a sexy name. What did surprise many people was the lack of movement made by two teams considered serious contenders for the Stanley Cup, Chicago and Philadelphia.

It is clear that the weakest point of each team is their goaltending. How weak is up for debate. Both teams were rumoured to be aggressively pursuing a legitimate number one goalie at the deadline and both were unable to land said prize. Is this a bad thing? Does either team truly need a goalie to make a serious run at the Stanley Cup? Let’s look at each team individually.

The NHL trade deadline has become a full day media event in Canada. It’s crazy. Sportsnet is producing ads for their deadline show that have the analysts comparing the race to break stories among networks to the competition they faced as players on the ice. Doug MacLean yells about trades, something like, “instead of making bad trades today, I get to praise them!”

TSN is pretty awful on deadline day, too. James Duthie makes smart-ass remarks, while we watch Darren Dreger and Bob MacKenzie text on their blackberrys for 8 hours. Spectacular television. That being said, I do like watching for an hour near the actual trade deadline to get a nice recap of the day’s trades and to see if there is any sort of flurry near 3pm. I don’t need to watch each trade analyzed for an hour until the next trade occurs.

It hasn’t always been this way.

The NHL trade deadline is a month away, but there have already been three significant trades. The latest, consummated hours ago, involves the heavily rumoured Ilya Kovalchuk. It was not surprising in the least that Kovalchuk is no longer a member of the Atlanta Thrashers, but what is surprising is the team that acquired him, the New Jersey Devils.

I was going to wait to post this until closer to the trade deadline, but since Burkie and Sutter have gone crazy I thought it was appropriate to post it sooner.

GMs of terrible teams look fondly upon the 2007 trade deadline with the same wistful eyes that cocaine dealers get when remembering the 1980s.

This is the trade deadline that made rebuilding even more difficult than it already is. That’s because the 2007 trade deadline is better characterized as the year of overspending or the year of ignorance. Since it was only the second year after the lockout teams didn’t quite realize the tremendous value of draft picks in a cap system, especially first round picks. When you commit a large sum of your cap space to a small group of core players you continually need to replenish your remaining roster spots with young, cheap talent. Having young players make meaningful contributions, while still on their rookie contracts, is essential. GMs who believed they were on the cusp of a Stanley Cup run, or worse, on the cusp of only the playoffs, traded their picks faster than a crack addict selling their sex.

Last night the Leafs lost after striking an early 3 goal lead against one of the best goalies in the league. My dad pondered aloud how they would blow this one. As the eternal optimist, I suggested Kessel had another 5 goals in him, so the night was over. Did I believe it? Well, certainly not the 5 goals and I was even skeptical about the win at that point. When Raycroft came in I outwardly proclaimed domination (inwardly, I was very scared for Razor’s wrath). The Leafs ended up losing 5-3 and I hardly cared, just another day in Leafs Nation. At this point I accepted the ex-Leafs pick will be in the top-5 and in all likelihood the Leafs will win the draft lottery when they no longer own the pick. I’ve soured on pretty much everyone on the team. I was apathetic. Then I woke up this morning to the sounds of trades. My dad was listening to the radio, I was scouring the internet for information, Rick called me jubilantly, and texts from friends flew rapidly. Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.

We here at Five Minutes For Fighting are unapologetic Leafs fans, but I do believe that we try to analyze the team’s strengths and weaknesses in a fairly unbiased manner (…fairly). While we dole out punishment on other teams, cities, GMs, and players, we also spend a great deal of time (or plan to) critically examining everything about the Leafs, both good and bad. So, for fairness’ sake, today we are taking a look at Brian Burke’s first Stanley Cup victory with the Los Angeles Ducks of Anaheim and the luck involved in creating a championship team.

First, Leafs Nation is characterized as being overly effusive over Brian Burke’s hiring as Leafs GM. We allegedly canonize him as the second-coming of Conn Smythe. This isn’t entirely true. Yes, you will find it hard to get a Leafs fan to speak negatively about Brian Burke, but we do not believe he is the greatest GM in the history of the league. A more accurate description would be the best GM available at the time of his hiring, or the best GM in the history of the league compared to JFJ. Either works.

While Burke does have negative qualities, one of which is his poor draft record, he’s viewed as having complete autonomy from the moronic upper-management of MLSE and, more importantly, he has a Stanley Cup ring. But winning a Stanley Cup in the NHL requires more than just talent. It requires a great deal of luck as well. Brian Burke’s first Stanley Cup victory (and we’ll say it won’t be his last, right Leafs fans?) is testament to this. He largely inherited a quality team that only needed a few bold moves to make itself a championship calibre team.

Hating in sports makes it better. I hate the Yankees. It’s much more fun to watch games when they’re involved. Even if they aren’t playing against the Blue Jays I can still cheer for injuries and beanballs. Notice how I didn’t say either the Senators or the Canadiens. That’s because my hate for them is so vociferous that I can hardly stand to watch them play, ever.

So, I can appreciate the hate that Bruins fans are graciously bestowing upon Phil Kessel. I get it. I certainly don’t like it, but I can understand their hatred. If I were a Bruins fan I would treat Kessel the same way. As a fan, when I feel slighted by a player, even in the most trivial way, I carry that for the rest of their career. Alfredsson hits Tucker from behind and has the audacity to score the overtime winner immediately after? Hate. He mocks Sundin by pretending to throw his stick in the crowd? I can’t even describe my Alfredsson hate. Sean Avery makes cancer jokes to Blake? Hate. Yes, I take attacks against Leafs players personally. Even if these attacks are just merely scoring a lot of goals against the Leafs. Tavares is slowly developing some hatred in me. He’ll get there.

So, if I was a Bruins fan I would boo Kessel every time he touches the puck. I’d enjoy it, too. This will probably help rekindle the dormant rivalry between the Leafs and Bruins. I’m starting to hate the Bruins even more. Their Kessel hate is making me mad. Not to mention their pile of mounting victories against the Leafs. Hate.