Projecting the Contracts for Every RFA and UFA on the Toronto Maple Leafs

Restricted Free Agents

In case you are uncertain, restricted free agents (RFAs) are almost under full team control, the only way they can leave is through an offer sheet or a trade, however, the former never happens.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a number of RFA’s which we will break down. Those include Travis Dermott, Ilya Mikheyev, Dennis Malgin, and Frederik Gauthier.

Travis Dermott

At 23 years old coming off an ELC it will be very interesting to see where the Leafs go with Travis Dermott this summer.

Dermott has been a real solid defenseman for this team and personally, I think he is a key player in the organization moving forward. I actually wrote a piece on him earlier in the year where I broke down his game.

Back to the contract talk, here is where Dermott projects to sign at:

The predicted term for Dermott is 2 years with a 41% chance of that occurring. With that, they estimate that Dermott will sign for around $1.843Million.

The chances of Dermott signing his next most likely contracts are as follows:

1 year at 13% for $1.824 Million

3 year at 12% for $2.077 Million

4 year at 7% for $3.325 Million

5 year at 11% for $3.893 Million

6 year at 9% for $3.845 Million

7 year at 5% for $3.889 Million

If Dubas were to sign any of these contracts listed, I would be very pleased. I think Dermott is really underrated based on the fact he does not produce a plethora of points.

Ilya Mikheyev

The 26-year-old Russian stud known as “souperman” has been one of the season’s largest successes.

Coming from the KHL, most did not have high expectations for him based on the fact that most of the Leafs former European imports have not been even mildly successful.

But Mikheyev has proved he is a legit top-9 talent and possibly even top-6 talent.

The tough part with projecting Mikheyev’s contract is he only has a sample of 39 games in the NHL. This is even an issue when it comes to negotiations and why I said possibly a top-6 talent without confidence because the sample of Mikheyev is not very strong so we do not know exactly what he is at the NHL level yet.

Personally I do believe the model has Mikheyev’s contract as slightly too high given the sample size issue but we will still break down what the model has Mikhevey signing at.

The most likely Mikhevey is predicted at signing for is for 3 years at 34% at around $3.186Million.

The next most likely scenarios include:
1 year at 16% for $2.429 Million

2 years at 25% for $2.169 Million

4 years at 21% for $3.732 Million

The rest of the terms come under 2% so we will not cover those.

Personally, my expectation is that Mikheyev will sign for 1 or 2 years.

Especially since they will have to pay him a lot more for the third year based on the model and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be in a cap crunch again. It would also make sense since we should be confident in his NHL ability with the small sample size.

Denis Malgin

Another 23-year-old player coming up this summer is newly acquired Denis Malgin who has not been too flashy in his time in Toronto or throughout tenure in the NHL but he will likely get a raise.

Here is where the model projects Malgin to sign at:

The most likely contract for Malgin is 2 years at 49% for 1.618 Million

The next most likely outcomes are as follows:

1 year at 34% for $1.164 Million

3 years at 10% for $2.077 Million

There is nothing much to talk about here, I do not think this is a very important deal. Dubas will squeeze Malgin in the cap if he can, if he can not, Malgin will not be a large loss.

Frederik Gauthier

The one and only GOAT, the 6’5” 239 pound 4th line center is up again for a large contract.

There is not too much to talk about with the low event center so we will dive right into his contract projections.

Gauthier is expected to sign for 1 year at 60% for $953,500.

The next most likely scenario at 25% is a 2-year deal at $1.046 Million.

I fully expect the GOAT to be back for at least another season providing some fourth-line center depth once again.

That rounds up all of the notable RFA’s the Leafs have to sign this summer so we will move on to the UFA class.