What Could the Toronto Maple Leafs Bottom 6 Look Like Next Year?

With some of the Toronto Maple Leafs bottom six players set to hit free agency, their bottom two lines are uncertain.

In the 2020 off-season the Toronto Maple Leafs will have some of their players hit free agency..

The question is, who will re-sign and who will walk? Their bottom six is up in the air however their top six is pretty much already decided. (Matthews, Tavares, Nylander, Marner, Hyman, then Mikheyev/Johnsson/Kerfoot).

I’m going to go over what the Toronto Maple Leafs bottom six could look like by opening night for the 2020-21 season.

Players who are Locked up

Moving away from the players who are set to become free agents just for right now let’s go over the players who will more than likely play in the bottom six who have contracts for next season.

Kasperi Kapanen – 23 years old – RW – $3.2M

Alex Kerfoot – 25 years old – C/LW – $3.5M

Andreas Johnsson? – 25 years old – LW – $3.4M 

Pierre Engvall – 23 years old – LW/RW – $1.25M

Alexander Barabanov – 25 years old – RW/LW – $925K

I have a question mark beside Andreas Johnsson because I don’t know if he’ll be traded during the offseason to free up some cap space and try and bring in a defensemen or if he’ll end up playing on the second line and bump Ilya Mikheyev back down. (Stats from CapFriendly.com).

Players who are not Locked up

Now for the players who are not locked up under contract for next season that will more than likely play in the bottom six if they are on the team next season.

Jason Spezza – 36 years old – C/RW

Kyle Clifford – 29 years old – LW

Frederik Gauthier – 24 years old – C

Denis Malgin – 23 years old – RW/C

Out of these four players I can realistically see the Toronto Maple Leafs re-signing any of them who will agree to play for between the league minimum and a million dollars.  The Leafs have already stated a desire to re-sign Clifford, but his current salary is probably too high.

If the Leafs sign all four, only Clifford and Spezza would be likely to dress for most games.

Possible Bottom two Lines

Let’s put together the bottom two lines with some of the players potentially re-signing and having one or some as scratches.

3rd line – Johnsson/Engvall – Kerfoot – Kapanen

4th line – Clifford – Spezza – Barabanov

Scratches – Gauthier

The Toronto Maple Leafs have countless options for their forwards as they are one of, if not the deepest team up front in the NHL. They have a couple of fourth line players who can easily play on the third line, as well as some third liners who can play on the second line.

On top of that they have one of the best development systems down in the Marlies where half of the Toronto Maple Leafs current players have come from. Let’s name a few shall we…

Zach Hyman, William Nylander, Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson, Pierre Engvall, Frederik Gauthier, Travis Dermott, Justin Holl, Rasmus Sandin, Martin Marincin, and Calle Rosen.

That is a fantastic list of players who have spent some time down in the AHL and worked their way to an NHL level job.

Some current AHL players down in the Marlies who can compete for jobs next season include Agostino, Kossila, Petan, Korshkov, and maybe even Robertson.

All in all, the Toronto Maple Leafs have a tremendous stable of cheap depth players who are, for the most part, much better than typical NHL fourth liners.