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Toronto Maple Leafs Lead NHL in Cost-per-Win

By James Tanner |
Apr 8, 2017; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk (25) congratulates goaltender Curtis McElhinney (35) after a win over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Air Canada Centre. Toronto defeated Pittsburgh 5-3. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 8, 2017; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk (25) congratulates goaltender Curtis McElhinney (35) after a win over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Air Canada Centre. Toronto defeated Pittsburgh 5-3. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

The Toronto Maple Leafs seem to have the best value roster in the NHL.

Thanks in part to one of the greatest collections of rookies in NHL history, the Toronto Maple Leafs were able to have the cheapest cost per win in the NHL this season.  This is according to Jason O’Connor from clickitticket.com.

The article is pretty fascinating and I urge you to check it out as it ranks all 30 teams and sheds some interesting light on roster construction in the Salary Cap era.

What team has the lowest cost-per-win?  The answer is the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Each of their wins cost over $1.2 million.Toronto was also tops in cost-per-point at a little over $506,000.  They were also number one in cost-per-goal at $191,000 and change.

This is not unexpected.  One of the reasons the Leafs have been so good this year is the amount of players they have on entry level contracts, because it let them pay other players more than they otherwise could have.  An entry level contract is the contract a player has to sign to  play in the NHL after being drafted.  Their is a limit on both term and dollar value. Bonuses count towards the cap, but can be allotted creatively on the next years cap.  If you have a lot of them, you can spend money in other areas, so if your rookies are high-level, you get a huge advantage.

Thus, with Nylander, Brown, Hyman, Carrack, Marner, Matthews, Kapenan, and others having minimal cap-hits, it gives the Leafs’ management a chance to load up their roster.

The Toronto Maple Leafs get Full Value

What’s scary, however, is that they didn’t even take it. The Leafs could have spent around 15 million more this season because if they’d fully gone to the cap, they could have moved injured players like Horton on to the long-term IR and recouped the cap hit. The Leafs have a ton of room this season to pay any bonuses on the likes of Matthews and Nylander, and next year they have a crazy amount of cap space.

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Boyle, Brown, Hyman, and Zaitsev need new contracts.  After that, they should still have $15-20 million when/if they put some guys on the LTIR.

The Leafs – already a really, really good team – have the ability to manipulate the salary cap to their advantage.  Their best chance to win the Cup is when Matthews et. al. are on ELC’s.

The reason the Leafs were able to get such value per win is not just because of the rookies.  It’s because management made some very smart contract decisions when it came to Gardiner, Kadri and van Riemsdyk.

All three are well above average NHL players.  They are all outperforming their contracts, thus giving the Toronto Maple Leafs the most value-laden roster in the NHL.

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