How the Toronto Maple Leafs Can Easily Replace Cap Casualties

The Toronto Maple Leafs off-season has barely begun and there are already numerous stories out about potential player movement.

Given the Toronto Maple Leafs contender status, and their cap situation, there is a good chance that this summer will see them make a lot of moves.  (Perhaps one like this).

The Leafs are already thin at left-wing and right-defense, so moving Zaitsev and Marleau, even though their contracts are terrible, will test the team’s depth, so the story goes.

With Travis Dermott out until the winter, the Leafs could find themselves with just two returning defenseman when the season starts.

If rumours about Kadri are true, who will play centre?

How the Leafs will Compensate

People are concerned about the Leafs ability to contend while they pay three players over ten million, in addition to whatever they’re paying guys like Andersen, Muzin, Rielly and Nylander.  How are you supposed to fill out a lineup?

The answer is rookies (for the most part). While the Leafs are sure to sign or trade for some players, the vast majority of their openings are going to have to be filled from the Marlies.

This isn’t the problem that people think it is, however.  The Leafs could end up with several of Jeremy Bracco, Dymtro Timashov, Iilya Mikhalev, Timothy Liljegren, Rasmus Sandin, Jespers Lindgren, Calle Rosen or Andrea Borgman in the lineup.

A lot of people will scoff and say that “you can’t win with rookies,” but the fact is, if the Leafs replace lower level players like Zaitsev, Ozhiganov, Hainsey, Gauthier, Marleau, Ennis, Brown etc.  you’ll hardly notice.

Not Much Difference

One thing that is often mentioned is that at the professional level, there isn’t that much difference between players, once you get outside of the elites.

We think that there is – whether because we cheer for certain guys, or certain guys tend to show up in highlights, or have name-brand recognition – but there really isn’t.

Players who can significantly impact the game are rare, and they are hard to obtain.  A lot of times people will suggest that it is better to trade an expensive player for two players who each make half his salary, and have more “good” player, but less “elite” ones.

The rarity of elite players, and the similarities of everyone else make this a losing play. While I’m sure there are exceptions, the vast majority of $2 million dollar players in the NHL could be swapped out with any NHL capable player making the league minimum, with no discernible difference.

It might seem counter-intuitive to say this, but in a Cap World, you want to get as many high-priced players as possible.  Given a big enough sample size, the team with the most elite players will always win.

WAR is a stat that you may have heard of. It is an attempt to come up with a single number that can be used to measure hockey players.  It stands for Wins Above Replacement.

The purpose of the stat is to measure players across many different statistical categories and come up with a number that represents their contributions.

Last year there were 434 NHL players who played 1000 5v5 minutes.

Only 49 of them put up a WAR per 60 minutes of over  0.10.   That is only 11% of the entire NHL.

These 49 players range from 0.10 War/60 to 0.31

The rest of the NHL ranged from .09 to -0.10

The range for 11% of the NHL regulars is larger than the range for the other 385 players.  (All stats from corsica.hockey). This suggests that while certain players have very large impacts on the game, most players are more or less equal.

Nothing is cut and dry, and of course there are exceptions, and of course this list would fluctuate every year due shooting and save percentages.  What we see here, however, is that only about ten percent of NHL players actually have a significant impact on the game.

This is why it makes sense to pay your Auston Matthews and your John Tavares’s.

But it’s also why there is no sense in paying Connor Brown $2 million when any random player getting paid the league minimum will contribute roughly the same thing.

It’s why the Leafs probably aren’t too worried about losing Nikita Zaitsev. It creates a hole in the lineup only in the sense that a guy who was here is gone.  There’s probably going to be a slight drop off between Zaitsev and a 20 year old rookie, but it’s not going to be $3.5 million dollars worth of difference, and if you allocate the savings and use them towards adding another elite player to your lineup, you will come out way ahead.

So for example, if the Toronto Maple Leafs lost Marleau, Brown, Zaitsev and Hainsey and they replaced them with rookies, they are probably a slightly worse team.  But if they take the savings (their salaries minus the rookie’s) and add one elite player to their lineup, they’ll be much, much better.

The ideal strategy for any NHL team in a salary cap world is to buy as many elite players as you can get, and pay everyone else the league minimum. (With exceptions where you’re betting a player – say Kapanen – might turn into one of these players).

The Toronto Maple Leafs will have no trouble replacing their cap casualties.