It’s the most wonderful time of the year for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
NHL players don’t get paid in the playoffs. Did you know that? A compensation pool exists, expected to land in the $16 million range for 2018-19, but that money is proportionally split up between all qualifying teams and paid in the form of bonuses.
It’s funny, really. After slogging through an arduously long 6-month season, filled with relatively purposeless matchups, endless back-to-backs, and a blatant dose of load management, players will ultimately cash their final game cheque right before the games begin to matter.
Technically speaking, the salary cap ceases to exist in the postseason, too. And with it, so do its problems. That means a total kibosh on offer sheet threats. No more trade rumours. No haggling over who goes up and who goes down. Nada.
The playoffs manage to strip away all of hockey’s ancillary talking points and distractions, leaving all but wins and losses as lone the matters at hand.
This seems to be a pretty successful avenue for the NHL from an entertainment perspective. In stark contrast to the regular season, fans can tune into a broadcast’s playoff pre-game show on any night and be greeted with a large selection of in-depth analysis pertaining solely to the upcoming game.
It’s how the game was meant to be consumed.
The players embrace this lack of outside nonsense. You should too.
On Thursday night, Mitch Marner put forth what was arguably the best game of his young career to this point in Game One, and in historical fashion. He was spectacular, and if the Maple Leafs are expected to have any shot at vanquishing their black-and-yellow boogeyman, Marner will be relied upon to match that performance on at least six more occasions.
A similar sentiment applies for the pair of Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen, whose respective speed and offensive ability may just give Toronto’s forward corps an unmatchable degree of depth.
The Maple Leafs are a good team. And good teams tend to have a bunch of good players.
Why do I bring this up? Well, for a singular reason.
Each of Marner, Johnsson, and Kapanen are pending Restricted Free Agents. All will need new contracts in the coming months for them to stay entrenched as members of Toronto’s present and future, with their projected price tags rising more and more with each series-swaying performance.
That may very well serve as a problem, especially when taking into account the projected zero dollars in cap space the Maple Leafs have for next season. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Not right now.
Leafs fans have spent the entire 2018-19 season in a constant state of anxiety. From holdouts to offer sheets to trade rumours, the bulk of any team-centric discussion has centred almost solely around topics that take place off the ice; some not even eligible to happen until months later.
The playoffs are perhaps the one moment which fans have been afforded since October to turn their collective attention to the games at hand. The salary cap doesn’t exist at the moment, and with it, neither do any of the spread sheet-housed anxieties of the future.
It’s important to remember that; to enjoy the breadth of excitement currently unfolding before you. Allow yourself the luxury of becoming enraptured in the peaks of valleys of postseason hockey. It’s good for the soul.
You have all summer to agonize over offer sheets. Right now, a trip to the Stanley Cup is all that matters.
If the players can realize that, then so can you.
Thanks for reading!