I thought I would have fun and see how the lines stack up so far for the Maple Leafs
Alexei Ponikorovsky Mats Sundin Jeff O'Neill
Chad Kilger Jason Allison Nik Antropov
Darcy Tucker Matt Stajan Tie Domi
Wade Belak Clarke Wilm Nathan Parrott
Bryan McCabe Tomas Kaberle
Ken Klee Karel Pilar
Aki Berg Carlo Colaiacovo
Ed Belfour Mikael Tellqvist
Wow. Filling that out it becomes incredibly obvious how desparate the Leafs must be to sign a couple of more top tier forwards because as it stands now they only have one upper-quality winger in Jeff O'Neill and his is coming off a weak season. They need to sign an Alexnader Mogilny type player to play with Sundin (Molginy himself or a Ziggy Palfy) and drop O'Neill to the second line. If the Leafs do indeed sign Eric Lindros they I would guess they play him a centre and move Sundin to the wing. Poni, Eric and Mats would make a nice sized first line. Regardless of how you play the forwards the Leafs have a crying need at left wing. Kilger and Tucker are just not second line players.
The defense is not great but not as poor as the forward position. You can see why the Belfour and Belak to Detroit for Zetterberg rumour was started. Man do the Leafs need help up front.
Depending on what happens with their restricted free agents the Leafs have about $7M to spend. This should be enough to get two more quality forwards. Maybe John Ferguson can pull this thing off. It is pretty obvious that the Leafs won't be winning the Stanley Cup this year but the playoffs aren't out of the question...yet.
Update: So much for Ziggy Palfy. He has signed with Pittsburgh.
