Toronto Maple Leafs: Speedy Winger Will Leave For a Payday

It’s hard to see a scenario where the Toronto Maple Leafs end up retaining speedy Russian winger Ilya Mikheyev.

Ilya Mikheyev this past season turned into a proper scoring threat, along with his bursts of breakaway speed on the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty killing group.

Unfortunately for the Leafs, he really was an internal rental piece for this year’s playoffs as he will certainly be seeking more than the $1.645 million per season that he has earned the past two seasons.

Moving on is one of the rude facts of life on the salary cap era NHL. For every player that out-performs a contract, there is the risk of having to seek a new team.

No Other Option for Toronto Maple Leafs

As was the case with Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johansson and Connor Brown before him, the asking price will prove too costly for the Toronto Maple Leafs.  It’s not so much that they can’t afford it, it’s that paying mid-range, non-star players big-money is something they’ve always been hesitant to do in the Brendan Shanahan era.

Just aligning Ilya Mikheyev to the names above and the value of their current deals, you’re looking somewhere in the range of $3 million-plus per season.

That sort of price is highly unlikely to fit into the very tight jigsaw puzzle that is the Toronto Maple Leafs salary cap. With several important renewals yet to be signed, the team has just $6 million in cap space.  But even if they had a ton of space, it’s doubtful they want to overpay spark-plug winger whose ceiling is probably around what he accomplished this season.

On balance, and given his publicized request for more ice time (and possibly a trade), maybe it’s for the best that Ilya Mikheyev may be able to find a new landing spot that can give him that little bit more time.

However, that won’t change the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty kill will be worse off for his turn of speed and the team in general will need to find 21 goals from elsewhere on the roster.

The ability he has shown over the last few seasons to slot into the middle-six with relative ease and (eventually) show a scoring touch certainly means that if the Leafs can find a way, you’d assume they will bring him back but the money will surely be calling.

By having his career-best season when he has, Mikheyev will be worth around $3.5 million per season. For that price, fully expect the Leafs to audition a cast of current Marlies as a possible replacement.  Players like Miheyeve historically get overpaid in free-agency, so expect the Leafs to set their sights elsewhere.

At that sort of price, it’s hard to pick where he might land, but he’s the kind of player any team would love to have – but at a reasonable price.