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Toronto Maple Leafs Salary Cap Update

By James Tanner

Apr 6, 2017; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews (34) talks to center Tyler Bozak (42) on the bench against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Air Canada Centre. The Lightning beat the Maple Leafs 4-1. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 6, 2017; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews (34) talks to center Tyler Bozak (42) on the bench against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Air Canada Centre. The Lightning beat the Maple Leafs 4-1. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Toronto Maple Leafs have a lot of cap-space going into next season.

How much they will have currently remains to be seen.  The NHL salary cap can be complicated by things like bonus overages and long-term injuries, so I’ll do my best to break everything down simply as it relates to the Toronto Maple Leafs salary cap.

Current Situation:

The Toronto Maple Leafs currently sit at 50 contracts (out of 50 allowed) and have a cap hit of $72,821,399 out of $73 million.  (This and all subsequent cap information from capfriendly.com).  

Without having to transfer any of their long-term injured players (Lupul, Robidas, Horton) to the LTIR, the Leafs spent to the cap this season.

This included cap hits for the three previously mentioned injuries, contracts buried in the AHL (Greening, Laich, Michalek), buy-outs (Cowen and Gleason) as well as retained salary (Kessel).

Moving forward, they will continue to pay Kessel (five more years @ $1.2) as well as Gleason (one more year @ $1.3 )and Cowen (one more year @ $750 K).  There is also one more year of Lupul ($5.25) and three more of Horton ($5.3).

Luckily, if the Toronto Maple Leafs get close to the cap, Lupul and Horton can have their cap hits offset by moving them to the LTIR.

Next Year’s Cap

As written about here, the Leafs will have approximately nine contracts under the 50 limit once they sign their RFAs and  July 1st rolls around (which is when old contracts expire and new ones take effect).

So far, they have 33 contracts for next season and have spent $55,795,834. The current NHL salary cap is $73 million, and it hasn’t been announced weather that will increase next season or stay the same.  It is projected to be $76 million. 

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The Leafs, who will need to replace or re-sign four UFAs off their current roster (Hunwick, Polak, MacElhinney and Boyle), as well as give out contracts to three RFAs (Zaitsev, Hyman and Brown) will have just over $20 million to resign those players and improve the roster.

They will, however, be able to do away with the contracts of Lupul and Horton, should they elect to spend to the cap.

This means that, assuming a $76 million dollar salary cap, the Toronto Maple Leafs over $30.5 million dollars to spend to meet the top of the salary cap.

Let’s say that it costs half that to re-sign or replace all the RFA and UFAs.  That Leaves the Leafs – a team that just showed it’s capable of going to-to-toe with the NHL’s best team in a playoff series – with approximately $15 million dollars to spend to improve their team.

So not only are the Leafs primed to immediately contend for the Cup anyway, they’ve got $15 million to improve what is already great.

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