Editor In Leaf
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Flat Cap Great News for Toronto Maple Leafs

By James Tanner

Nov 15, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs left wing James van Riemsdyk (25) motions from the bench during the game in which he scored a hat trick against the Nashville Predators at Air Canada Centre. The Maple Leafs defeated the Predators 6-2. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 15, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs left wing James van Riemsdyk (25) motions from the bench during the game in which he scored a hat trick against the Nashville Predators at Air Canada Centre. The Maple Leafs defeated the Predators 6-2. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Toronto Maple Leafs have a ton of cap space for the upcoming season.

  The Leafs Salary Cap situation is that they have about $12 million in cap space.  Once the season begins, if they want to spend to the cap they can move the roughly $11 million in combined cap hits of Joffrey Lupul and Nathan Horton to the long term injured reserve.  Once that happens, they won’t count against the Leafs cap.  This will give the Leafs roughly 22-23 million to spend.

New York Post hockey writer Larry Brooks reports that the NHL did not have any revenue growth this past  year and as such will not be raising the salary cap.  The Players Association can decide to raise it if they put money in esgrow, but Brooks says that won’t happen.

So that means the salary cap will stay where it is.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Win in this Situation

If the salary cap doesn’t go up, the Toronto Maple Leafs will have $22 million dollars to spend.  They need a back-up goalie, and to resign Connor Brown and Zach Hyman.

They also have the option of moving Komarov, Bozak, JVR, and Fehr who make a combined $13 million. This gives them flexibility in addition to all the cap space.

Further more, many teams are going to be pretty screwed by a static cap.

Five teams, Chicago, Anaheim, St.Louis, Brooklyn and Columbus have less than five million dollars in cap space.   And that is just today,  with every team having a restricted free agent or two to sign, teams are going to be crunched against the cap.

This will results in teams with space being able to sell it off.  As, for example, the Coyotes did last year when they got a first round pick from Detroit in exchange for taking the last years of Pavel Datsyuk’s contract and cap hit.

It will also result in a potential for more offer sheets, since teams might be prevented from matching.

The Leafs will have benefit from both scenarios. Additionally, they might be able to get players cheaper on July 1st, and to score useful players off teams in trouble (example, Marcus Kruger has probably played his last game for the Blackhawks).

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The cap not going up just makes an already ideal situation better. The Leafs already have their three best player on entry-level deals (read:cheap) several players in their primes on team-friendly deals (Gardiner, Kadri, Andersen, JVR) and are getting off cheaper than most teams in the expansion draft.

Add this flat cap in, and the stars do truly seem to be aligning for the Toronto Maple Leafs to go all-in before their three best players cost a combined 26-30 million.

Credit for cap numbers: capfriendly.com

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