Toronto Maple Leafs: Re-Examining the Dave Bolland Era

Dave Bolland has a complicated history with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Why are we re-visiting Bolland’s time as a Leaf on today of all days? No particular reason.

Acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks via trade on June 30th, 2013 in exchange for one 2013 second-round pick, one 2013 fourth-round pick, and another fourth-round pick in 2014, Bolland’s time in a Maple Leafs jersey was strikingly brief.

Brief, and admittedly frustrating.

The two-time Stanley Cup champion did, in fact, put forth some truly decent numbers to kick off his tenure in Toronto. For a while, he even looked every bit the pesky, defensively responsible pivot Dave Nonis had just spent a significant draft capital to acquire.

Bolland’s start to the 2013-14 season saw him amass an impressive 10 points in his first 15 games, a stretch which included a sterling two-goal performance in Philadelphia in the second game of the regular season that endeared him to Leafs fans, before a severed Achilles on November 2nd sidelined him indefinitely.

As it turns out, that injury would precipitate the end of Bolland’s career. The Mimico-native wouldn’t make his way back into the Leafs lineup until late-March and, even upon return, would manage a mere two points in the season’s eight remaining games.

Perhaps Bolland’s most impressive feat – aside from his pair of Stanley Cup victories, of course – was one that happened to occur off the ice. Frankly, the specifics of it are still a mystery to this day.

Despite missing the bulk of the past season with an injury that is notorious for the lasting effect it leaves on an athlete’s future performance, coupled with the subpar numbers he put up throughout his scant late-season cameo, Bolland somehow convinced the Florida Panthers to hand him a five-year deal when free agency opened on July 1st, 2014 worth an average of $5.5 million per season.

At the time, Bolland’s new figure accounted for roughly 7.8% of the 2014-15 season’s $69 million salary cap. The most confounding part? The Maple Leafs were apparently not far off from the Panthers in their final offer.

If you believe the Maple Leafs are in a precarious cap position right now, just think of the alternate universe out there in which the team is paying a now-retired Bolland around $4.9 million in dead money to (self-admittedly) sip mojitos on a beach.

Look, I know what you’re thinking. Why would the presence of roughly $5 million be so bad in a cap context when Toronto has more than $10 million currently sitting on the LTIR in David Clarkson and Nathan Horton? And that’s a good point.

The thing is, though, the Maple Leafs took on those salaries from other teams not as an act of charity, but as a favour.

In absorbing the gargantuan cap hits that other teams simply could not, the organization flexed its financial muscle to receive an extra added benefit; with Horton, it was getting out from under Clarkson’s cap hit; with Clarkson 2.0, it was a trio of goodies in ridding themselves of Garret Sparks, acquiring an extra fourth-round pick, and increasing their threshold of surplus spending over the cap by inflating their LTIR savings.

Bolland, on the other hand, would have been a net-negative. Having paid him then like a top-six centre, the Maple Leafs would have otherwise gone into the 2014-15 season fully expecting Bolland to play a top-six role, something which he obviously could no longer do.

Not to mention, 2014-15 was the time when newly-appointed Team President, Brendan Shanahan, finally realized the need for a scorched-earth approach and began to initiate the Maple Leafs’ top-to-bottom rebuild.

It’s a lot easier to tear things down when a $4.9 million-cinderblock isn’t standing in your way.

Being a half-decade removed from Bolland’s arrival and subsequent departure from the blue and white now, it seems as if both sides are better off for it. Toronto proceeded to amass what is arguably the best young core in hockey led by its undisputed best player, Auston Matthews, while Bolland has since retired and lives out his days staring at this spectacular view.

It’s a rare happy ending in a sport that offers so few. Isn’t that nice?

Thanks for reading!