Kyle Dubas has made some great signings in his short tenure as Toronto Maple Leafs G.M., but it’s his decisions on when to walk away from a player have been just as important.
Signing a player is hard, but knowing when NOT to re-sign a player is even more important and the Toronto Maple Leafs have faced this situation many times lately. When it comes to being a general manager in any professional sport, letting a player walk away is one of the hardest things to do, especially when a fan-base has fallen in love with ‘X’ player. Also, whenever a team decides to pay a player for their past performance, that typically doesn’t end up well.
Value is one of the most important words in a salary cap world. Like any boss in business, you want to get the most out of your employees. However, in professional sports that means that you want to pay the player the least amount of money possible, and get them to perform well beyond that price tag.
For example, the Toronto Maple Leafs currently have a player that is doing exactly that right now and his name is Zach Hyman. Currently making $2.25M per season, Hyman is set to become an Unrestricted Free Agent after the 2020-21 season and the team has a very important decision to make.
Based on his production over the past few seasons, Hyman is performing better than contract. In fact, based on a model I created a month ago, I think the Toronto native is outperforming his contract by $5.387M and would be worth over $7M on the open-market. That model takes into consideration that Hyman would have scored over 30 goals this season and that type of production is rare in the NHL and goal-scorers deserve to get paid.
As a result, the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to have to ask themselves a few questions next off-season. Do they pay a hefty price and re-sign Hyman, or let him walk and hope one of the younger players can replace his production?
That will be the next biggest decision by Kyle Dubas and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but here are the top five moves by the current G.M. thus far: