Toronto Maple Leafs: Sign Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner Now

The Toronto Maple Leafs are primed for a big year.

When the Toronto Maple Leafs signed John Tavares, everything changed.  Suddenly a team stacked with young superstars also had one of the best veteran in-their-prime cores in the NHL (Tavares, Andersen, Rielly, Gardiner, Kadri).  Couple that with 20 million in cap space in the final year of Matthews and Marner’s ELCs and you have an opportunity to ‘go all-in’ that no team since the 2009 Penguins has ever had in the Salary Cap era.

If there is one thing holding the Leafs back, it is this:

William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews remain unsigned beyond their entry-level deals, meaning that there is no cost certainty going forward, which makes going all-in riskier and harder than it otherwise would be.

Matthews etc.

If the Leafs sign Matthews and Marner now, even though they can technically wait until next year to do so, then they would be able to better gauge the short-term moves that they are obviously going to make over the course of the upcoming season.

Unless the Leafs want to limit themselves to only players with expiring contracts (and why would they want to cut themselves off from any avenue of improvement?) then they are going to have to sign their three franchise players now instead of later.

If Marner and Matthews are signed now, the Leafs will have a much better idea of what they can and can’t afford for next year.

They are obviously going to sign William Nylander this summer, but if rumours are true, they are also working to sign Matthews as well.

If they can pull it off, it would be another victory for new GM Kyle Dubas. In only a couple months on the job, Dubas has already made one of the greatest moves any Leafs general manager ever has when he signed hometown superstar  John Tavares.

Let’s say one day next week the Toronto Maple Leafs announce a press conference to tell the world they’ve just locked up Nylander, Marner and Matthews to simultaneous eight year extensions.   It would be one of the single greatest days in franchise history – for the second time this summer.

And it will probably happen.  The Leafs have to sign these players, and signing them now not only has the advantage of giving cost certainty for team building, but it also might help the Leafs sign team-friendly deals if they do it now instead of after next season when both players could realistically post over 100 points.