Toronto Maple Leafs : Why Protecting Justin Holl Might Make Sense
The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired Jaren McCann last weekend in a deal that was seen as an absolute steal.
Then, the Toronto Maple Leafs turned around and protected Justin Holl, a move that many of Kyle Dubas’ biggest fans have called into question.
Was this a mistake by the Leafs GM? Do the Leafs have a deal in place with Seattle? What were they thinking?
The thing is, we can’t really know until after the Seattle Kraken make their picks.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Protecting Justin Holl
In my opinion, this is one of the more interesting problems the NHL has given us to work out in recent memory.
The Leafs could have protected seven forwards and exposed Travis Dermott and Justin Holl, two players that are arguably less valuable than both Kerfoot or McCann from an individual standpoint.
If you consider the Leafs roster makeup, this is even more true than just looking at which players are better: The Leafs have Rasmus Sandin and he is already likely better than either Dermott or Holl. Outside of Kerfoot and McCann, they don’t have much in the way of versatile, defensively strong forwards who can also score in the bottom two-thirds of their forward group.
Now, Sandin is a lefty, which would give the Leafs four lefties in their top-four, so that may play a factor, but it’s not known how much of one, if at all.
That said, all of these players are on reasonable contracts and all four of them could help the Leafs next season. Which one you personally like comes down to several factors that go beyond just who is the better player.
The McCann McPickle
McCann makes this conversation even more interesting because there are two ways to look at his addition.
1. If the Leafs paid Seattle a 7th rounder to select Filip Hallander in the expansion draft, it would have been seen as a genius move. They would have escaped the draft by losing only a B-level prospect with a fairly low chance at being a star.
2. It doesn’t matter what the Leafs paid for McCann. Getting a discount on a player doesn’t change his overall value. Losing McCann for nothing is different than losing just Hallander and a 7th, because you didn’t have to expose him.
This is the kind of Game Theory problem that you can really sink your teeth into, because it’s an interesting exercise (at least to me it is) to try and figure out which version of the final outcome the Leafs should work to achieve.
Think about this: You find $50 on the street. You don’t really need $50, and wouldn’t care if you lost it, so you bet it on an extreme long-shot bet and see what happens. Either you’ll change your life or it will be like you never found $50.
Or think about this: The problem is a kind of reverse of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. The SCF simply means that once you’ve paid the price, that is the cost and whatever happens after is irrelevant. So for instance, the Leafs paid a 1st round pick for Nick Foligno. They should not consider that cost when considering if they want to re-sign him. Or say you buy Jays tickets and then you are sick on the day of the game. If you go just because you already paid for them, you’re making your life worse for no reason. The cost is the cost and whether you actually use the tickets is irrelevant.
So in the case of McCann, the Sunk Cost Fallacy can be reversed. The cost the Leafs paid to prevent losing a player off their roster is a 7th rounder and the (at best) 5th best prospect in the organization. Whatever McCann may or may not have done is irrelevant.
However, that isn’t strictly true, and that is because of Opportunity Cost. If you bet your found money (or your shiny new Jared McCann) you might end up where you were before your found the money (or the McCann) but you still missed out on whatever that money could buy you.
In this case, you’ve got to run a risk vs reward scenario. The risk is actually that you end up with nothing and lose out on whatever $50 could have bought you, and the reward is you hit huge on a long-shot bet.
So regardless of the sunk cost fallacy working in reverse, and regardless of the fact that you would be the same as you were before you found the $50 if you lost it in a bet, to know whether the risk of just betting your found money is worthwhile you have to know what that $50 is worth to you.
How bad to you need $50? Whatever I can buy for $50 I can probably afford anyways, so personally it would makes sense to bet it. But what if I found $5000? Sure, winning 50 K would change my life, but so would eliminating my car payment in one lump sum. There is obviously going to be a point where keeping the money instead of going for a big payday is the right choice.
So back to McCann…
What Should the Toronto Maple Leafs Do?
As far as I can tell, based on the scouting reports, my limited viewings of having noticed him in games I’ve watched, some youtube videos, his salary and his statistical profile, I think that Jaren McCann is worth a lot more to the Leafs than me finding $50.
I think he is worth enough car payments that I’d have to seriously consider keeping the money.
But that is only in a vacuum. The reason I think the Leafs risked losing McCann is because they think Justin Holl will be extremely valuable after the expansion draft.
The Leafs are betting that the Kraken take Kerfoot, and that they’ve acquired his replacement (who is cheaper, younger and has higher upside) for a cheap cost AND that they can then also trade Justin Holl after the draft.
This is why the Leafs move is better than their critics are suggesting.
Whatever happens tomorrow, they now have a whole new market for Justin Holl created by teams who just lost their #4. A 29 year old Hulk-Sized right-shooting defenseman with a small amount of success in a top-four role, on a very decent contract should be very enticing to teams that just lost their #4.
Logically, if you could get McCann at a discount before the draft, you can sell Holl for a premium after the draft.
So the worst case scenario here is that Leafs are out Hallander and a 2023 7th + whatever the difference would have been between McCann’s performance and Kerfoot’s.
The best case is that it costs them Hallander and a 7th to get 2 years younger and one million in cap space, and an expiring contract, then they trade Holl for an inflated price. Even if they just add a couple picks for Holl and save the million bucks difference between him and Sandin, this is an extremely good bit of managing.
The best case scenario in this situation is worth the risk of basically just being were they were last week. The Leafs found some money and instead of just using on something they wanted, they decided to use their found money to make a very reasonable bet.
Mock Expansion Draft. dark. Next
To sum up: If the plan is to trade Holl when his value skyrockets tomorrow at 5:01, then the risk of losing McCann is reasonable. If they risked McCann to keep Holl it’s a bad move.