The Toronto Maple Leafs do not have a salary cap problem.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are often criticized for having placed themselves in a salary cap predicament, but this is false.
While it’s true space is limited, the vast majority of competitive NHL teams are up against the cap. Additionally, most of those other teams have far less flexibility than the Leafs do.
This is because the Leafs have no long-term contracts that are bad – indeed, all their long term contracts are to superstar players whose deals will become team-friendly as the years go on and the cap rises.
The Leafs – should they desire to add to their roster – can do so without touching any of their core players. They also have the depth to internally replace any of the players they move to make space – the very definition of flexibility.
Toronto Maple Leafs Cap Space: $12 Million +
The Leafs are tight up against the cap. Only the fact that Andreas Johnson is on the long-term injured reserve allows them to dress a full 23 man roster without penalty.
But, because the Leafs could easily clear space in order to add a player, they aren’t in bad shape at all.
The NHL is a strong-link game, which means that elite players drive results. A real world example of how knowing this might affect roster construction is as follows: It would be better to spend your money on an elite player and two bad players, rather than three average players.
Knowing this, the Leafs could easily move a few pieces of their roster out, replace them with cheaper players who have a comparable impact, and then use the space to acquire an elite talent.
Kasperi Kapanen $3.5 million
Andreas Johnson $3.4 million
Cody Ceci $4.5 million
Frederik Gauthier $674 K
That’s over $12 million dollars in cap space.
If the Leafs had to, Martin Marincin, Rasmus Sandin or Jordan Schmaltz could all replace Cody Ceci with zero noticeable drop-off.
Johnsson is already missing from the lineup, and because the Leafs have been gifted with the emergence of Pierre Engval and Ilya Mikheyev, it barely matters.
Trevor Moore, when healthy, is not a significant downgrade from Kasperi Kapanen.
None of these guys are needed to play large roles, so they’re mostly interchangeable. Kapanen and Johnson are good players, and I like them, but they are luxuries on a team as stacked as Toronto is.
So should the Leafs decide that their is a #1 defenseman or an elite forward they want to trade for, they won’t be held up by the salary cap.
People have complained about the Toronto Maple Leafs cap situation, but the reality is that they could create enough cap space to afford one of the league’s most expensive players without altering the core of their roster.
That’s a level of flexibility few, if any other, teams can match.