Toronto Maple Leafs: Defending the Petr Mrazek Deal

The Toronto Maple Leafs have some uncertainty in net this summer, and in the following 500 or so words, I am going to explain why I think they not only don’t have a problem, but are in excellent shape in net.

While it’s true that the Toronto Maple Leafs currently do not have any goalies penciled into their lineup for next summer, I think this is a great opportunity and in no way a problem.

A problem would be if you had a lot of money tied up in a player you couldn’t trust.

Having no goalies is a blank slate, and outside of already having an elite netminder, it’s the best situation you could have.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Goaltending Situation

First, I must defend the Petr Mrazek contract.  Entering last season, the Leafs were Cup Contenders with a dirt-cheap starting goalie, but no real way of knowing if he’d be any good or not.

Enter Mrazek, and his three-year deal, with a 10 team no trade clause, and a cap hit of $3.8 million, taking him to his age 32 season.   Given his body of work, his upside, and the fact they were desperate for a decent option in case Campbell imploded, this was perfectly reasonable at the time.

Goalies in the NHL are notoriously unpredictable, but betting on two goalies with their track-records, at very small cap hit for the goalie position seemed like a low risk move.  Given that the Leafs ended up with the 27th best goaltending, it doesn’t seem like it worked out, however, if you also consider that they finished 4th overall while spending far less on the goaltending position than most teams, I think you’d have to say it worked out just fine.

Especially since Campbell was lights-out in the playoffs.

The Leafs may have tried to acquire one of the NHL’s few elite goalies last summer, who knows? They weren’t able to land one, and went cheap in net, and it worked out fine.

To be honest, if they could get Campbell to re-sign at his current $1.6 million, I’d be happy to bring Mrazek back for next season too.  But since that isn’t happening, and since Mrazek’s only useful with a partner who is really cheap, he’s got to go.

The reason I defend this contract, even though it now needs to be moved, is that there was never any risk to it, and served the exact function they wanted when they signed it.  That NTC isn’t going to matter (  he’ll be happy just to be in the league still, and it saved them some cap hit last season so is ultimately a positive thing) and it shouldn’t cost too much to get out of the last two years of an injured, but otherwise still decent goalie with some upside.

As for the Leafs goalie situation overall, it’s great.

There isn’t enough of a chance that Campbell is an elite goalie to bet on it.  I wouldn’t give him a raise of a single dollar and would be happy to move on.

The Leafs, with no goalies, are free to do whatever they want.  The flexibility to trade for or sign a goalie is much better than having mid-range goalies locked into contracts you can’t reasonably expect them to live up to.

The Toronto Maple Leafs likely will find themselves in the first round of the playoffs next year experiencing a degree of pressure no team has ever seen in the first round.  Having an honest-to-god-true-number-one goalie is going to make all the difference.

I think in almost all other cases it’s smart to save assets and hope to get lucky with a cheap goalie like they’ve done in the past.  I think that option is now closed to them, and that they will need to be smart and creative to figure it out.

But Petr Mrazek’s contract won’t be a hindrance to this, and since everything worked out pretty nicely in net last year, it’s hard to complain about a deal that made sense at the time.