Toronto Maple Leafs: How a Nylander Bridge Deal Could be OK

The Toronto Maple Leafs are in a bit of a catch-22.

They’ve got this one in a million situation: Matthews and Marner have one year each left on criminally cheap contracts relative to their skill and the Salary Cap.  Therefore this allows the Toronto Maple Leafs to get a ton of extra cap room this season that they’ll never have again.

In addition, it’s not like Tavares is in decline, but he’s 27 and smack dab in the middle of his prime.  Matthews on the other hand is is 21 and entering his third season.  Enough players have had their best ever year in their third season that it’s a reasonable possibility that the Matthews/Tavares combo could be the best it will ever be right now.

In further addition, the Toronto Maple Leafs happen to have a whole host of very good players who are in their prime and on reasonable, if not extremely cheap deals – Andersen, Kadri, Rielly, Gardiner, as well as dirt-cheap upcoming options like Dermott,  Kapanen and Johnsson.

Salary cap, player’s primes and peaks, and the contract situation of players like Johnsson, Matthews, and Gardiner all make this current team something that is going to be hard to top, in terms of roster quality, in the upcoming years.

That isn’t to say that the Leafs don’t or can’t have a five or ten year window with their current roster – they definitely can.  But think of this year as if  they’ve got a cheat-code enabled.

On the flip side, they’re faced with too much contract uncertainty to make any moves to improve the team and really go for it.

William Nylander

I have vehemently been against trading William Nylander and against him signing a bridge deal.  A bridge deal means you have to actually pay him what he’s worth in two years, instead of betting on his current skill and signing him to deal that will eventually prove to have a cheap annual value.

For example, he’s not worth $8 million per year right now, based on the contracts of his closest comparables.  However,  if you paid him that and locked him up for his entire twenties, odds are that overtime that annual figure looks pretty cheap.  It’s a hedge against paying market value, which is extremely harmful to a team if you’re trying to keep a core of elite players together long-term.

I do, however, see a way in which a bridge deal is, if not optimal, at least a good move for the team.

Were the Leafs to sign Nylander to a two year deal similar to what Sam Rienhart just signed for, say a just a bit over $4 million because Nylander is a better player, they’d have an extra $3 million or so to play with this season and next.

This might hurt the Leafs down the line, but it would be extremely beneficial for this year and next year’s chances of adding a Stanley Cup.

It also has the bonus of not forcing Nylander – who could very well be a better player than Mitch Marner – to take less just because his contract is up first.  It allows him to sign his eventual long-term deal knowing full well where he fits in the grande scheme of things in comparison to how the Leafs view him, and what the other two get paid.

Frozen in Place

Right now, the Leafs seem frozen by the fact that they have don’t know how much three of their four best players are going to cost, not to mention their best defenseman is a pending UFA. Say what they will publicly, there is no way that Dubas or Babcock is happy returning with the same four defenseman, on the same pairings, that they had last year when they were among the league’s worst defensive teams.

Locking in Nylander to a short term deal is bad for the Leafs of the future, but like paying Andreas Johnsson almost nothing on a show-me deal, it does stack the Leafs for this season.

The Leafs currently have $13 million in cap space, but that number can be significantly lower because of $4.5 million in potential bonus overages to ELC players.   Should the Leafs sign Nylander to a cheap, short-term deal, it would be easier (I assume) to move that money to next season if they want to, since they probably accounted originally for paying Nylander in the $7 million range.

They could then spend to the cap and move Nathan Horton to the LTIR, getting back his cap hit.  This would allow the Leafs (assuming a $4 million Nylander contract) to have the full $13 million to spend this year, if they want to.  (It’s still $9 million if I have misunderstood something about the bonus overage rules).  That is significantly more than they will have if they pay Nylander his full current value.

Considering they’ve already got such a good team, the extra Cap Space for this year’s Leafs would be insane.  It would allow them one single season in which to have (potentially) the most amount of good players fit in under the cap in NHL Salary Cap Era history.

I still think Nylander should be locked down for eight years.  I do, however, see a bright side if that doesn’t happen.