The Toronto Maple Leafs are pretty tight against the salary cap right now.
But you already knew that, right? According to our good friends over at CapFriendly, the Maple Leafs have a whopping $0 in wiggle room with which to sign new players. Of course, that number stands without factoring in the LTIR shenanigans surrounding David Clarkson and Nathan Horton, who will each likely be placed on Long Term Injured Reserved as soon as legally possible, but it’s a very claustrophobic situation nonetheless.
The thing about the Leafs’ cap predicament, though, is that it only really hits hard for this coming year. Shifting over to the 2020-21 season, Toronto will have just $55,433,866 in salary committed to their players – excluding the inevitable Mitch Marner deal – with 10 of the 15 forwards on their roster remaining under contract, as well. Assuming that Marner signs for around $9.5 million per year, that number inflates to $64,933,866, which is still a comparatively low sum given the Leafs’ talent.
Now, assuming that the NHL’s cap ceiling continues along its current trajectory and increases by the 1.025% marker it did from 2018-19 to 2019-20, Kyle Dubas & co. will have approximately $18,596,134 in space to sign free agents the following offseason.
And he’ll need it.
Let’s take a dive into the CapFriendly “ArmChair GM” mode to figure the 2020-21 Leafs out.
2020-21 Toronto Maple Leafs
Morgan Rielly is the lone defenceman currently on the Leafs active roster who happens to be under contract past this coming season. But that’s a pretty good pillar to start with. Assuming that both Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin make the jump to the NHL full-time in 2020-21, that shapes Toronto’s blueline into something in the essence of:
Rielly – Player X
Sandin – Player X
Player X- Liljegren
Debates around whether or not Sandin would be on the second or third pairing in this hypothetical scenario are more or less mute, as the configuration above is merely a placeholder. Where he ends up in the lineup doesn’t really matter to the team’s financial bottom line.
With both rookies now factored into the roster, it gives the Leafs $16,838,634 in cap space to sign three defencemen, a fourth-line centre, and a backup goalie. Luckily for them, the 2020 UFA class is actually pretty deep on the back-end. Names like Torey Krug, Alex Pietrangelo, and Jared Spurgeon are hitting the market, along with current Leaf, Tyson Barrie.
In our magical dreamland, let’s foresee the Barrie experiment working out swimmingly which convinces the Leafs to attempt to re-sign him. Barrie reportedly wants $8 million per year. So…
Rielly – Barrie
Sandin – Player X
Player X – Liljegren
That leaves Toronto with $8,838,634 to sign two defenders, a fourth-line centre, and a backup goalie. Keep in mind, this all being done while assuming that the Maple Leafs make zero trades, and therefore shed no salary from their constructed roster over that summer.
Pierre Engvall will be a restricted free agent after this coming season, and given how the 23-year-old centre prospect has not played a single game in the NHL, his asking price will assuredly come in on the lower side of things. In that case, let’s pencil in Engvall for Trevor Moore‘s current deal: two years at $775,000 AAV.
Suddenly, the Maple Leafs have their fourth-line centre and are left with $8,063,634 of space.
And if Engvall is too much of a gamble for you, there are options: re-signing Jason Spezza, extending Nick Shore, or slotting in Kalle Kossila.
Shifting over to goaltending, it is highly unlikely for Joseph Woll to be ready for full-time backup duty in a calendar year, so the Maple Leafs will probably be forced to turn their sights over to the free-agent market. For argument’s sake, let’s put on our imagination goggles and predict that Michal Neuvirth grabs the backup job out of camp and performs admirably for Toronto in this coming season. So admirably, in fact, that the team opts to re-sign him for another year at a comparative raise, $1 million.
With Neuvirth locked in, the Leafs now need only two defencemen to round out their roster, with $7,163,634 in which to do it.
Funnily enough, Radko Gudas will also be a free agent in 2020, and the Leafs have reportedly been hot on his tail for the past few years. Gudas, a right-shot defenceman, will be 30 by then with a prior cap hit of $3.35 million. In a relatively deep UFA class, Gudas is unlikely to cash in at a crazy extent on his next deal, so let’s pencil him in at an even $4 million.
Rielly – Barrie
Sandin – Gudas
Player X – Liljegren
The Leafs now have $3,063,634 in cap space to sign a bottom-pair LHD.
Which brings us to Travis Dermott. Dermott will be an RFA at the end of the 2019-20 season, and given how he will begin the year on the IR recovering from a shoulder injury, the youngster may opt for a bridge deal in order to prove his worth. It’s not an ideal scenario, but let’s just roll with it. Therefore, precedent would set Dermott’s bridge in the two-year variety with an AAV of $2.75 million.
Forwards:
Johnsson – Matthews – Nylander
Hyman – Tavares – Marner
Moore – Kerfoot – Kapanen
Agostino – Engvall – Bracco
Defence:
Rielly – Barrie
Sandin – Gudas
Dermott – Liljegren
Goaltenders:
Andersen – Neuvirth
The Leafs now have a full roster, bearing top-end talent at every single position group with a mix of young performers and effective veterans, and $313,634.
Once again; this is all while assuming that Toronto does not trade a single player off their current roster for the purpose of shedding salary, and that they opt to spend big money to re-coup Barrie and poach Gudas, which could very well not happen.
Either way, they have a contention calibre team with cap room to spare.
All that’s left for this year is to wait.