The Toronto Maple Leafs have a huge disadvantage when it comes to trading this season, but there’s a solution to fix it.
The NHL has a salary cap for one reason: parity.
If the league wanted to increase revenue and make sure their players got paid their fair price on the open-market, there would be no such thing as a salary cap. The Toronto Maple Leafs would have offered Connor McDavid $25M per year to play for his hometown team and it would have been worth every dollar.
The salary cap and revenue-sharing has been good for many teams. Organizations like the Florida Panthers or Arizona Coyotes have definitely benefited from this, because they’ve been able to stay competitive, when they shouldn’t. Sure, they haven’t made the Stanley Cup Finals recently, but they’ve won more playoffs rounds than the Leafs have in 20 years.
Even the NHL Lottery System was created to make things as fair as possible. If your team tanked on purpose, it didn’t guarantee you the top pick. It gave you the best odds, but it didn’t mean that the next Wayne Gretzky was joining your organization.
So, as you continue to read this, you’re probably wondering, “what’s your point?”
Well, let me explain.
Toronto Maple Leafs Should Cheat System When Trading With US Teams
As I just mentioned, the NHL has certain rules in place to make things fair and equal. However, in a pandemic world, that’s certainty not the case. Not only are some American teams allowing fans into the building to garner a home-ice advantage, but each Canadian team has a trading disadvantage.
At this moment, if a player on an American roster gets traded to a Canadian team, that player has to quarantine for two weeks. That player could miss two games, or they could miss 10 games, based on that schedule in that timeframe.
That’s why many NHL insiders have looked at this upcoming week as a spot for the Leafs to trade with an American team. The team only has two games scheduled from March 15-25, so the player they acquire wouldn’t miss much action.
Here’s where the Toronto Maple Leafs need to “cheat the system,” and use these rules to their advantage.
As a team that is up against the salary cap, the Leafs benefit daily because the player’s contract they would be trading for gets lower. For example, each player has a “daily cap-hit”, so although they have a $5M cap-hit, that number could be $2M on the books by the NHL Trade Deadline.
The lower the cap-hit, the more likely it is that the Toronto Maple Leafs can acquire such player.
If the Leafs are making a trade with an American team, they should essentially make a trade “in principle,” and then have “X player” quarantine in Toronto for two weeks before putting the deal on paper.
This would save the Leafs an extra two weeks in cap-hit money and be the difference between a good acquisition in a great one. Why should Toronto have to pay two weeks of salary when they’ll be isolating in a hotel by themselves?
Obviously, this only works if Toronto is trading assets like prospects or draft picks, instead of a roster player. If the Leafs did this with a roster player, they’d have to healthy-scratch him for two weeks, which wouldn’t be fair to him or the team he’s going to.
However, if Toronto traded a few draft picks and a prospects “in principle,” for let’s say Nick Foligno, then it could work perfectly.
If the American player has to quarantine regardless, who cares if the deal’s not officially done when they do it. When you’re a team like the Leafs who are very concerned about the salary cap, this would be one way to save a few bucks and cheat the system.