Toronto Maple Leafs: Phil Kessel Retained Salary Hurts

Phil Kessel has not played for the Toronto Maple Leafs since they traded him on July 1st, 2015 to the Pittsburgh Penguins. In order to make that trade happen, the Leafs needed to retain $1.2 million of Kessel’s $8 million salary.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have to pay that $1.2 million over the entire duration of Kessel’s contract. That means the team will continue to have that money go against the salary cap until the end of the 2021-22 season.

It would not seem as big of a burden if the NHL salary cap continued to go up. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus, the NHL has had to freeze the salary cap at $81.5 million for the next few seasons.

With no rise is the salary cap, teams all around the NHL, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, are now caught in tighter cap situations than they had anticipated. Having Kessel’s $1.2 million on the books for two more seasons only makes matters worse.

Toronto Maple Leafs 2020-21 Salary Cap

We all saw how tight Toronto’s salary cap situation was last season at $81.5 million. When the NHL announced that the cap would be remaining at $81.5 million, we knew Leafs GM Kyle Dubas would need to get creative.

Part of that creativity resulted in the trades of Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen, who had a combined salary-cap hit of $6.6 million. On the surface, this might seem like he was forced to make his team worse because of the salary cap. Instead, the team’s strong drafting and scouting allowed them to have cheaper replacements that made Kapanen and Johnsson expendable.

With the savings, the Leafs were able to afford to add a high-end defenseman, and a bunch of depth players such as Jason Spezza ($700,000) and then add Joe Thornton and Travis Boyd for that same minimum amount. Even with those bargain deals, the team is currently $1.049 million over the $81.5 million cap limit.

Now, the Leafs could make a minor trade to free up space, but they don’t need to.  The Leafs can accumulate cap space throughout the season by being under the cap, which they can do by manipulating their roster and sending eligible players to the minors when necessary.

Still, without the Kessel money they could either avoid these gymnastics or add another player.

Toronto Maple Leafs 2021-22 Salary Cap

As of right now, the team will have just under $13.550 million in available cap space for the 2021-22 season. The Leafs will have 16 Unrestricted Free Agents (UFA) and six Restricted Free Agents (RFA) heading into that season.  It sounds like a lot, but the most of the team’s core players are locked up.

The biggest name on the team’s UFA list is starting goaltender Frederik Andersen. He is entering the last season of his five-year deal worth $5 million. If the Leafs plan on keeping him, then you can bet it will take a large chunk out of the $13.549 million in cap space the team has for the 2021-22 season.

The  good news about this is that the team has many young players about to take the next step. Those players are cheaper options the team can use until the cap starts going back up again. Once again, that $1.2 million the team will be paying Kessel will make things tighter than the team would like. Then again,  we must think of the positives: without getting out of Kessel’s contract, would the team ever have been bad enough to draft Auston Matthews?

Can the team afford to keep both Andersen and fan favourite Zach Hyman? Do they even want to? If they do, Kyle Dubas will need to get very creative again next offseason.