Updated Toronto Maple Leafs Depth Chart Following Kapanen Trade

The Toronto Maple Leafs 2020-21 roster is going to look a lot different than last year.

Every Toronto Maple Leafs fan speculated that Kasperi Kapanen would be getting traded this off-season, but it’s always a shock when it happens. When I initially saw that Kapanen was getting shipped to Pittsburgh, many possible returns raced through my mind.

Are the Leafs getting Matt Murray? Maybe a few draft-picks? Sidney Crosby?!?!?

After 30 minutes of speculation, the trade officially went like this:

The Toronto Maple Leafs were able to turn a bottom-six forward into a first-round draft pick, high-end prospect (Filip Hallander), fringe NHLer (Evan Rodrigues) and AHL veteran (David Warsofsky).

No offense to Pontus Aberg and Jesper Lindgren, but there are numerous replacement players just like them.

GM Kyle Dubas deserves a ton of credit for this trade and even without Kapanen, the forward depth is strong, with many more changes to come.

Updated Toronto Maple Leafs Forward Depth Chart

We’ll break down the line combinations in a second but here is the depth chart that includes all of the pending Unrestricted Free Agents (UFA) and Restricted Free Agents (RFA).

• Centre: Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Alex Kerfoot, Pierre Engvall*, Frederik Gauthier (RFA), Adam Brooks, Filip Hallander
• Right Wing: Mitch Marner, Andreas Johnsson, Ilya Mikeyev (RFA), Alexander Barabanov, Jason Spezza (UFA)*, Denis Malgin (RFA),
• Left Wing: Zach Hyman, William Nylander, Nick Robertson, Kyle Clifford (UFA), Evan Rodrigues (RFA), Kenny Agostino

*Engvall and Spezza can both flip between wing and centre

Assuming the roster stays intact, here’s what the updated line combinations would look like next year:

• First Line: Hyman – Matthews – Marner ($24.7 Million)
• Second Line: Nylander – Tavares – Johnsson ($21.3 Million)
• Third Line: Robertson- Kerfoot – Barabanov ($5.3 Million)
• Fourth Line: Clifford – Engvall – Spezza ($3.7 Million)
• Healthy Scratch: Adam Brooks, Frederik Gauthier ($1.45 million)
• Assumptions: Don’t re-resign Mikeyev and Malgin, Clifford signs for $1.5 million, Spezza signs for $700K and Gauthier for $725K
• Total Forward Cap: $56.45 Million

Although those lines look great on paper, there is still too much money allocated to the forwards.

This line-up would only give the team $2.3 million to sign three defenseman. Even if the Leafs went with Timothy Liljegren, Mikko Lehtonen and another entry-level contract, it wouldn’t work.

Jake Muzzin, Pierre Engvall and Jack Campbell are all making a combined $2.925 million more next season, which isn’t talked about enough.

Also, the Leafs lucked out when the LA Kings retained 50 percent of Kyle Clifford’s contract last year, so if the team wants to re-sign Clifford, he’ll be getting roughly a $800K-$1 million cap-bump too.

In order for this roster to work with the “core-four”, Johnsson and Kerfoot are the next to leave. Those departures would give the Leafs another $6.9 million in cap-space.

If that happened, the Leafs would then be able to slide Barabanov into the second line and Engvall to the third-line. Brooks could then become the fourth-line centre and the roster would look more like this:

• First Line: Hyman- Matthews- Marner
• Second Line: Nylander – Tavares – Barabanov
• Third Line: Rodrigues – Engvall – Robertson
• Fourth Line: Clifford – Brooks – Spezza

I expect there to be a ton of movement from now until the 2020-21 season and although the Leafs executive team doesn’t think they have a cap-issue, four contracts close to $40 million makes it really hard to construct a deep roster.

Do I think this predicted 2020-21 Leafs roster looks better than the previous team we just saw?

Probably not.

But, it will look much better if they can address their defensive issues with the money saved from Kapanen.

Get ready for a number of trades and free agency moves by the Leafs this off-season. The Kapanen deal is just the tip of the iceberg.