The Toronto Maple Leafs are doubling down on their salary cap strategy – a good thing, because the math says that that is exactly how to manage an NHL team.
Roughly, 10% of the NHL is made up of elite players who are worth between 1 and 5 Wins Above Replacement over the course of 82 games. The other 90% between negative value and .99 WAR. Therefore it makes no sense to pay mid-range players big money ( and for the most part, the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t).
The idea here is that if you save $3 million dollars by passing on the Brandon Sutters of the world in favor of the Pierre Engvals , you can spend your money where it counts.
Critics of this strategy are intent on ignoring the fact that the Leafs iced one of the NHL’s best teams this season, after signing one of the best free-agents available in the summer, and had one of the highest probabilities to win the Stanley Cup.
Regardless of the critics, the Leafs are sticking with the plan, and if that is the case, I say put your money where your mouth is and sign the best free agent to hit the market since John Tavares.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Dougie Hamilton
Arguably the best defenseman in the NHL right now, and inarguably the best over the last few years, Dougie Hamilton is maybe the best player to ever reach unrestricted free-agency.
Coming off a broken leg this year, Hamilton had maybe his best ever season. He scored at over a 60 point pace while being better than 99% of defenseman offensively (5v5) and 72% of them defensively.
With Hamilton on the ice this year, the Hurricanes got over 60% of the shot-attempts and goals, while getting 56% of the scoring chances and expected goals. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Those are the numbers of an elite player. (chart from @jfresh).
— Editor in Leaf (@EditorinLeaf) June 17, 2021
Hamilton, if not for the last two shortened seasons, would have been flirting with 70 points in each of the last two years, while providing very good defense. With the possible exception of one player, Cale Makar, Dougie Hamilton is the best defenseman in the NHL.
It’s not often you can add a franchise altering superstar to your lineup, but if you can, you’ve got to try. Hamilton is going to make something like Alex Pietrangelo’s seven year $8.8 million dollar contract.
If the Leafs went after him, they would be betting heavily on their studs and duds approach to the salary cap, but they’ve gone this far, so why not go all the way?
The salary can work. Get rid of Justin Holl, replace him with Hamilton and you have the best top four in the NHL, maybe the best ever assembled, at least in the cap era. Sandin and Liljegren and Dermott can round out the blue line for less than $3 million.
Replace Freddie Andersen at the league minimum, then let Hyman, Kerfoot and Mikheyev go. Along with the Big Four, you’ve got Nick Robertson, Adam Brooks, Pierre Engval, Jason Spezza, and Alex Galchenyuk.
You then give every opportunity for players like Nic Petan, Joey Andersen, Rodian Amirov, Fillip Hallander etc. to make the team. The Leafs will have a better team with this proposed roster than they had last year.
Dougie Hamilton can fit on the Leafs roster, they just have to fully commit to the concept they’ve already gone 85% all-in on.