Randy Carlyle didn’t say a word Friday. He didn’t have to.

But less than 82 games into his time as coach of the Maple Leafs, one thing has been made apparent: Carlyle’s fingerprints are all over the off-season moves being made by general manager Dave Nonis.

This is his team now. The players he didn’t have much use for — Mikhail Grabovski and Clarke MacArthur to name two — are gone. David Bolland replaces Grabovski as the third-line centre. David Clarkson takes most of Grabovski’s money to move into a role as banging second-line winger. And in concert, Nonis and Carlyle are one step closer to having the kind of lineup they want to go forward with.

It isn’t a perfect team, it isn’t close to that. But it’s a lineup of moving parts that both GM and coach are comfortable with and at least three important issues the coach had with the roster have been upgraded.

Clarkson is a textbook Carlyle winger. He bangs. He fights. He desperately wants to be a Leaf. He scores goals. He fights.

Did I say he fights?

Carlyle loves that kind of presence from a winger he will start with Nazem Kadri and Joffrey Lupul at training camp. He likes the intimidation factor. More than that, he likes the mixing and matching of a finesse-laden Kadri, alongside the multi-talented leader in Lupul, beside a winger who is anything but shy.

If you transfer the buyout money of the previous day, the Leafs essentially traded Grabovski for Clarkson: Considering that (a) they couldn’t trade Grabovski for anything prior to buying him out; (b) Clarkson turned down more money elsewhere to play for his hometown team, the Leafs have put themselves in a better place up front.

And it becomes just a little tighter if you go back to draft day and the acquisition of Bolland. When Carlyle won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks, he had a terrific shutdown centre in Sammy Pahlsson. He tried Grabovski in that role in his first Leafs season and it was, well, an attempt. In the playoffs, when Carlyle searched for an answer to shut down David Krejci’s line in Boston, he found he had none.

Bolland is that answer. He gives the coach the kind of flexibility he needs lineup-wise. He can centre the third line, occasionally move into a more prominent role on a second line, can be used to protect a lead in the third period, to score a winning goal, just as he did in the Stanley Cup.

And with that one-goal lead and less-than-a-minute-to-play situation, coach Joel Quenneville turned back to Bolland to work the final 58 seconds. He is that kind of player.

He’s the Leafs’ version of Sammy Pahlsson. Or is copying the Stanley Cup champions the way to go? That tends to be the trend. The Leafs have added their version of Bryan Bickell or Andrew Shaw — a more gifted version, really, in Clarkson — and they added their version of Bolland in, of all people, Bolland himself.

That wasn’t all Carlyle and Nonis wanted to accomplish. Neither the coach and GM thought the Leafs were good enough in goal. I know fans think differently, but the Leafs’ decision-makers take a different approach. Neither Nonis nor Carlyle liked the fact James Reimer didn’t catch pucks cleanly and left too many rebounds out, while still playing a decent calibre of goal. Now they have Jonathan Bernier and a one-two punch in goal, with Bernier getting every opportunity to be the starter.

A smaller signing that garnered little talk — bringing in T.J. Brennan on defence to essentially replace Mike Kostka — is a depth move. Pro scout Steve Kasper has been pushing Brennan for weeks now. The Leafs would have liked to have added a top four defenceman. The only two available, Andrew Ference and Rob Scuderi, had no interest in playing here. Now they start with a top four of Dion Phaneuf, Carl Gunnarsson, Jake Gardiner and Cody Franson. They have Morgan Rielly a year or so away. They liked their organizational depth on defence. And there were no “A” defencemen available in trades or free agency.

“I like where we’re going,” said Nonis. “We’re deeper down the middle (with Bolland). We’ve more grit. For a coach who likes to mix and match his lineup, I think we’ve given Randy more options.”

It’s all about Randy now. His team. His players. Let the future begin.