Toronto Maple Leafs: Travis Dermott Deal Is Pretty Smart

The Toronto Maple Leafs re-signed Travis Dermott yesterday to a 2 year contract extension.

Travis Dermott, drafted in second round, 34th overall in 2015 by the Toronto Maple Leafs, just finished his fourth year and 208th career NHL game.

The question is, will he play another one?

The NHL Expansion Draft is July 21st, and until then, all we can do is speculate.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Travis Dermott

The contract for Travis Dermott is very, very good for the Leafs.  

Dermott’s overall results last year were better than 80% of NHL defenseman.  He is incredibly underrated and those results are fantastic, driven by defense that is almost in the 90th percentile.

Dermott is sort of like the defensive version of Jake Gardiner.  Gardiner was a puck moving genius who gained a huge advantage over other players by taking big risks.  In the aggregate, these risks more than paid off, but since the average person is going to remember only big plays, it led to his being criminally underrated.

Dermott doesn’t put up the offense, but he does limit scoring chances with an aggressive approach that occasionally has ugly results.  These are the plays that get remembered, but a look at the data tells you that it pays off – big time.

Sure, people will look at Dermott’s production and say “oh it’s just 3rd pairing against bad opponents.”  And, while this is somewhat true, the fact is that team’s need to deploy somebody in those minutes and the vast, vast majority of NHL players who do are not anywhere close to as effective as Dermott has been in the role.

Furthermore, it is estimated that teammates have a 5x bigger impact on a player’s performance than who they play against.  So if Dermott was forced to play higher competition, he’d also get a better partner and play more with the Leafs best players. Additionally, he’d score more if he was playing higher in the lineup, which would only make him more valuable.

All this is great, and it shows that Dermott’s new deal can provide a ton of value at virtually no risk whatsoever – if the Toronto Maple Leafs somehow had six better regulars, he would be easy to move.

The thing is though, we still don’t know if Dermott will be back with the Leafs next year.  The expansion draft may see him making a move to Seattle.  Before signing Dermott (they still would have had to protect him if unsigned) the Leafs only had a single player who met the exposure requirements on defense – Justin Holl.

Now they have two, and there is no clearer picture on who they might keep.  Dermott is five years young, has a higher ceiling, is cheaper and the better player.  Holl is right handed and a pet project of the GM, and has been part of an elite pairing with Jake Muzzin.

It’s a tough call, but Justin Holl is going to lose his job to Rasmus Sandin at some point anyways, so keeping Dermott should be a fairly easy choice.  Bottom line though: signing Dermott to such a cheap deal is a smart move with absolutely no downside. Can’t beat that.