3 Value UFA Forwards Toronto Maple Leafs Should Sign

The Toronto Maple Leafs will need to continue to find value in the bottom-six in order to be successful next season.

Ever since Kyle Dubas took over as GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, value contracts have been very important to his philosophy. High-end skill can be rewarded financially, but the bottom-tier of the roster is where you find the value.

For example, whether it was Michael Bunting, Ilya Mikheyev, Ondrej Kase, Jason Spezza or David Kampf last season, all four of those players were paid far less than what they were worth.

It’s a hard philosophy to live by, because you have to get extremely lucky and need to find diamonds in the rough. However, if you trust your professional scouting team, you can get rewarded from this approach and it can balance out your roster in a salary cap world.

Signing the core-four to half of the salary cap is always going to create a cap-issue, however if you can continue to find players who make a minimum salary who should be $3-5M players on the open-market, it can really balance out your roster and make the team well-rounded.

As it stands out right now, Toronto has a few players that have probably outplayed their contract, so instead of re-signing them to a dollar-amount they can’t afford, it makes sense to go hunting for value on the open-market.

As such, here are three UFA’s forwards that the Toronto Maple Leafs could sign for cheap.

No. 2: Antoine Roussel

On a league-minimum contract, the 33-year-old Roussel could be a welcomed player on Toronto’s fourth-line next year.

The Toronto Maple Leafs currently have Kyle Clifford and Wayne Simmonds who will be playing a similar role as Roussel, but Roussel may be able to score a few goals closer to Jason Spezza’s pace than those two.

Roussel’s best skills are built towards his physicality, which is still something that Toronto needs to improve on.

Their bottom-six of the line-up has some physicality, but unlike Clifford and Simmonds, Roussel can still be a reliable penalty-killer, which is something you can never have too many of.

As previously mentioned, he’s not going to be asking for much more than minimum wage and that’s a positive on a cap-strapped team.

Bringing Roussel in for a season could add some experience and a change of scenery on a really good team may be able to spark him to score 10 goals as well, which would create extreme value for the Leafs.

No. 3: Marcus Johansson

To me, Johansson is one of the most underrated players in the NHL and should be making more money than what he currently is.

However, as a pending UFA, he’ll probably sign a contract for less than $2M and make one lucky team very happy.

Hopefully that’s Toronto.

Johansson has a skillset that any hockey player would love. He can score, he has size and can be physical. Not only that, but he can play up and down your line-up and play multiple positions.

Instead of keeping Alex Kerfoot at $3.5M, it would be more beneficial to sign Johansson for a fraction of the price and use that cap-space to upgrade another position.

It’s been awhile since he was a 20-goal scorer, but the skill is still in there. Not only that, but with over 100 games of NHL playoff experience, Johansson is a reliable source in the most important games.

If someone in the top-six goes down to injury, Johansson can fill that void no problem, but he would be best suited on the wing in the bottom-six. Essentially, if he’s healthy, Johansson could be another Ondrej Kase-type player and be very effective, especially at his price.