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Toronto Maple Leafs: Taking Advantage Of Tampa Bay

By Tim Chiasson

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The Toronto Maple Leafs current obsession with one-two year contracts is setting them up to be the team that can take advantage of other teams who run into cap trouble.

First, this is not about the Toronto Maple Leafs getting Steven Stamkos. This is about getting one of the other Lightning players that Steve Yzerman won’t be able to keep.

At the end of the 2015-2016 season, the Lightning will have the prolific Stamkos up for renewal – presumably for at least the amount that Toews/Kane are making. They’ll also have the 65 point, 22 year old, Nikita Kucherov looking for a new deal. Alex Killorn will also be looking for a raise from his current $2.55M salary.

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At the end of the 2016-2017 season, the Lightning will have Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat looking to cash in on money similar to Vladimir Tarasenko ($7.5M per). Victor Hedman will be getting a handsome raise from the $4M hit he has right now. They’ll also have a goaltedning decision to make. Ben Bishop’s deal is up and they can either renew him for at least the same amount of money (~$6M) or move to Vasilevskiy.

Vasilevskiy’s deal is also up at the end of the 2016-2017 season – which means his $925K cap hit will likely take a big jump if he’s going to be the starter.

Let’s assign other current cap hits as the new deals for each of the Lightning players mentioned above.

Stamkos (Toews) – $10.5M

Hedman (Weber) – $7.85M

Johnson (Tarasenko/O’Reilly) – $7.5M

Palat (Tarasenko/O’Reilly) – $7.5M

Kucherov (Tarasenko/O’Reilly) – $7.5M

Killorn (Sutter) – $4.375M

Vasilevskiy (Jones) ($3M)

I’m going to say the Lightning will go with Vasilevsky just for the savings, but he’s going to get a raise so I gave him Martin Jones’ deal in San Jose as a backup turning starter.

Those seven players, on those deals, total $48.225M. If you add the six players already under contract for the 2017-2018 season, you bring the total for the Tampa Bay Lightning to $74.875M for 13 players – not counting any bonus money.

This is all assuming that Victor Hedman doesn’t exceed $8M per season – which is probably wishful thinking – and it doesn’t factor in a new deal for Jonathan Drouin, who is also up for renewal after 2016-2017.

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The NHL salary cap rose $2.4M from last season. Let’s go generous and raise it $4M each of the next two seasons, leaving the cap at $79.4M for the start of the 2017-2018 NHL season. That gives the Tampa Bay Lightning ~$4.5M in cap space to sign 10 players for a 23-man roster, based on a $4M cap increase each year.

It’s safe to say the Lightning are on their way to cap hell – which should be expected when you draft and acquire as great as Steve Yzerman has done. If the Toronto Maple Leafs draft picks pan out they’ll be in a similar situation down the road, it’s just how the cap works these days once you’re done with bridge deals.

With so many talented players, and not enough cap space to keep them all around, the Lightning will have to start selling off assets. That’s where the Toronto Maple Leafs can come in.

The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t need to acquire Steven Stamkos; they can observe as he re-signs in Tampa for north of ten million dollars and start looking at other players in the lineup. They can watch the handcuffs tighten on Steve Yzerman and then toss him a key.

Simply dealing Killorn and putting a new player in his role for less won’t do the trick if they’re going to sign Jonathan Drouin. That means that within two years there may be a very good player (or more) available from the defending Eastern Conference Champions.

It’s worth noting that the oldest age of the above group after the 2016-2017 is 27, which lines up nicely for that stage of the Toronto Maple Leafs rebuild.

Who would you like to see the Toronto Maple Leafs target from the Tampa Bay Lightning?

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