The Toronto Maple Leafs Sign Timothy Liljegren to Extension

The Toronto Maple Leafs have wasted no time resuming business after the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, putting an end to the 2021-22 NHL season.

The Avalanche winning is of course bitter-sweet for Toronto Maple Leafs fans.

We can get into that another time, but for now there is some much more interesting and positive news:

The Leafs have signed one of the top statistical defenseman in the NHL from last season to a dirt-cheap contract extension.

Toronto Maple Leafs Sign Timothy Liljegren

The deal for Liljegren is for two years with a $1.4 cap-hit .

While you would ideally like to overpay a player like this in the short-term in order to make the team extremely  team friendly down the line, the Leafs are in a win-now mode and thus seem to prefer the short-term bargain vs the long-term one.

Hard to argue with their logic, since the onus is to win while Matthews, Tavares, Marner and Nylander are on their current contracts.

Liljegren is providing just an insane amount of value for a $1.4 million dollars.  He was the Leafs best defenseman last season, according to all on-ice stats.

The fact he played 3rd pairing minutes for the most part is pretty misleading.   In the NHL, if you can perform at the bottom of the lineup, you can almost certainly perform at the top of one.  Furthermore, about 30% of his minutes were with Auston Matthews, where his numbers were immaculate, and that brings top competition for sure.

Additionally, there were no other third pairings on any competitive teams in the NHL this year that had a 3rd pairing as good as the Leafs had when Liljegren played. Not one.  If 3rd pairing minutes were so easy, all 3rd pairing players would have Liljegren’s numbers.  None do.

His numbers say he was better last year than 93% of other defensemen.  Even if you don’t trust “advanced stats” it’d be pretty weird if they were off by so much that a player ranked in the 93rd percentile isn’t great value at just slightly more than the league minimum. (Naturalstattrick.com).

With Liljegren on the ice last year, at 5v5, the Leafs outscored  their opponent 57-42 which is good for a 58%  goals-share, and ranks him in the top 30 among the 213 NHL defensemen who played 500 minutes this year.

That’s great, but plus-minus isn’t a very good stat because the goalie’s performance has more effect on the defenseman’s numbers than his own play does.  Which is why we turn to “expected goals” which work to evaluate a player’s performance without the randomness of luck.

Of the top 30 NHL defensemen as ranked by goals-for percentage, only two players had a higher expected goals rating than actual goals.

Charlie McAvoy, which makes sense, since he’s universally considered one of the NHL’s best defensemen.

And Timothy Liljegren, who soon will be. (capfriendly.com for all cap info).

Liljegren’s new contract is an extreme bargain, and finally developing a player they drafted, outside of their main core, who can contribute (potentially at a star level) for a cheap cap hit.  This is the dream, right here.  These are the contracts that help you win.

Great move today for the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Along with Giodano, the Leafs now have potentially one of the best pairings in the NHL for a combined $2.2 million.

The floor for Liljegren is elite third pairing player, and the ceiling is that he gets some votes for the Norris. This contract is disgustingly team-friendly.  Quite the start to the summer.