Toronto Maple Leafs Will Never Have This Chance Again

The Toronto Maple Leafs will never have a better chance to win the Stanley Cup.

The plan is to compete for years, icing a team for the next decade that can compete annually for the Stanley Cup.  It’s a good plan, and it can happen. But the Toronto  Maple Leafs will never have the chance they have now.

The reason why is simple: Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews barely make any money this season compared what they will make next season.  Entry-Level NHL contracts pay less than $1 million dollars to to of the NHL’s best players.  Next year, at the very minimum, they will combine to make $18 million.

So essentially, the Leafs have $16 million dollars to spend on players this season that they will never have again.

The Rarity of This

In a salary cap league, nothing is more valuable than star-level players who are on entry-level contracts.  But having two of them who are among the league’s very best players is something that rarely, if ever, happens.

The Penguins made their first of four Stanley Cup Finals of the Crosby-era when Crosby was on the last year of his entry-level deal.  They didn’t win, but were able to add Marian Hossa, Pascal Dupois and Hal Gill at the trade deadline because they didn’t have to pay Crosby or Malkin more than 900K.

The Blackhawks won their first Stanley Cup of the Kane/Toews-era in the 2009-10 season.  Their two franchise players each made less than a million dollars.

Are you sensing a pattern? It is in no way a coincidence that the only two other times  an NHL team has had two of the best players in the world on the last year of their entry-level contracts that they both made the Stanley Cup Final.  There has been 13 years since the Salary Cap was introduced, and 30 teams in the league (now 31) each of those years, and it’s happened exactly three times.  Once with the Hawks, once with the Penguins and now once with the Leafs.  That is roughly 3/400 odds.

These teams were able to win subsequent championships, but in both cases, their best roster was their first appearance.  They are without a doubt the two franchises the Toronto Maple Leafs are currently trying to emulate.

And that means the Leafs have to take advantage of this rare opportunity.

They Are

On July 1st 2018, secure in the knowledge that the rebuild was over and that the 2018-19 season was their best chance to win, the Toronto Maple Leafs signed John Tavares to the biggest UFA contract in NHL history.

Unfortunately, until William Nylander is tied up and the team’s salary structure is known, that was the end of the additions.  The Leafs entered their win now season with the exact same top-four defenseman that landed them in the bottom five defensive teams from the year before.

This situation is why you know they’ll sign William Nylander.  They aren’t going to do anything to sacrifice their one chance to stack their team.  Nylander can’t be traded for anyone close to as good as he is, so it’s a guarantee that they sign him.

Once Nylander is back on the team – and he will be – the Leafs will have free reign to add.  They will trade for a defenseman – maybe Josh Manson.  They’ll look to add a forward – maybe Kevin Hayes, Nino Niederreitter, Wayne Simmonds or Arteri Panarin – and they’ll try to follow in the Penguins and Hawk’s footsteps of making the Final while their superstars are their ELCs.

Salary info from capfriendly.com