Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Be Extremely Careful With Clifford Extension

The Toronto Maple Leafs are interested in bringing back Kyle Clifford on a contract extension.

Kyle Clifford, of course, is interested in returning to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This according to TSN. 

But if the Leafs are going to do this, they’ve got to be extremely careful.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Kyle Clifford

Since the Leafs traded for Kyle Clifford, he’s became a favorite for fans of the team concerned with their lack of physical play.

His numbers are well below 50% across the board, and he’s taken some bad penalties, so he hasn’t exactly helped his new team all that much.

This is, however, an extremely small sample size.  Given Clifford’s career history, I think it’s worth assuming he’ll be – at worst – an above average 4th liner going forward.

By all accounts he brings leadership to the team by being the sort of person that people just like to have around.  You cannot have enough of these guys on your roster, but at the same time, you can’t afford to pay them either.

Last week, I wrote that the Toronto Maple Leafs should let Clifford walk in free-agency.  This was based on the fact that Kyle Clifford currently makes $1.6 million dollars, and I assume won’t take a pay cut. 

The Leafs got the Kings to retain half the money owed to Clifford, making him a worthwhile addition.

However, they’ve got to be very careful about signing a player approaching 30, who is (at best) a fourth line player.

The reason the Toronto Maple Leafs are able to compete with so much money devoted to so few players, is that they understand that you cannot overpay or over-extend players who are not stars.

The Leafs could easily add another high-end player (I’m hoping it’s Alex Pietrangelo) if they were to move on from Ceci, Johnson and Kapanen, and replace them with players making the league minimum.

What they can’t do, is start handing out big money to role players.  It is the #1 most common mistake that NHL GMs make.

I recommend letting Clifford walk unless he’ll sign for $1 million or less. Preferably on a one-year deal.  I am a fan of Clifford’s, but his current deal is too expensive and the Leafs can’t extend him for such a high price.

A one-year deal probably won’t interest him, especially with a pay cut.  One sacrifice the Leafs could make, is giving him a stupid amount of term in exchange for signing a league minimum deal.

Say they gave him 6 years at $800K, it’s still technically a pay raise, and he can always be sent down, trade or waived with such a low cap hit.

That would be one way to make it so that the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t betray their philosophy and start handing out stupid deals to role players.