Toronto Maple Leafs: Why Do Other Team’s Do Favors for Tampa?

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a hard enough time winning without other teams doing favors for the team that beat them in the first round, and which they’ll have to go through eventually if they want any success.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are always going to be at a disadvantage with teams like Tampa who play in districts that don’t tax, and which then allow them to give players the same amount of take-home pay as another team, but with a lower cap hit.

Tampa already has enough advantages without other teams just outright doing them favors, which is exactly what happened this weekend when the Nashville Predators made a trade so stupid that I assumed the original report must have been wrong.

Because no one would willingly save the team that made the Finals three times in a row a ton of cap space…would they?

The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Look Closely at This Move

I’ve heard the Leafs talk about their belief that players earned no-trade protection and it needs to be honoured.

That’s total crap.

If, Tampa, the NHL’s best, best run, and most successful team can ask a two-time Cup winning star defenseman to waive their NTC then the Leafs can too.

It’s that simple.

The Leafs have $10.5 million locked up in TJ Brodie and Jake Muzzin.  Muzzin for sure has to go. Brodie is a great defenseman and still very effective, but you could still probably spend his cap hit better, especially when you could run a right-side of Liljegren, Holl, Lyubushkin for what you pay Brodie.

But back to Nashville and Tampa.

What the heck are the Predators doing?

Ryan McDonagh is 33 and has four years of an almost $7 million cap hit remaining.  He is no longer a star player, but he’s still very good.  But not that good.  Not even close.

The McDonagh contract was an albatross that would have prevented the Lightning from doing much to improve.

Instead, Nashville does them a huge favor, and puts them back into a great cap position.  McDonagh is going to slightly improve the Predators, but they easily could have spent the money they are giving him in a better way.

The bizarre thing is that they didn’t get compensated to do this.  The Predators sent  Phillipe Myers, and Grant Mismash to the Lightning, who save nearly $5 million on the deal.  That’s a real hockey trade for a player that should have cost multiple draft picks to get out of his absolutely terrible contract.

The Predators proving their are a poorly run disaster of an organization not withstanding, the real lesson here for the Toronto Maple Leafs is that even though you want to be a player-friendly organization, there is nothing wrong with getting players to waive their no-trade clauses.