Expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to Clear More Cap-Space

Expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to clear a lot more cap-space ahead of the start of free agency.

After getting out of  Petr Mrazek’s contract, for virtually nothing, the Toronto Maple Leafs cleared $3.8M in cap-space.

Before we talk about what the Leafs are going to do next, can we talk about how brilliant of a trade that was for the Leafs?

The No. 25 and No. 38 selections are virtually no different and all it took was swapping those picks to free up $3.8M in cap-space for two years, and save the team over $8 million in real money.

In the history of the NHL, Mark Howe is the only player drafted at that position to get inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and his last name was linked to one of the greatest players of all-time, so of course that panned out.

David Pastrnak is on his way to potentially joining Howe in the next 15 years, but besides that, at best, if you’re lucky, you’re going to draft someone Steve Ott.

Draft picks don’t matter, unless they’re in the top-five or top-10 of the NHL Entry Draft and even then, you can get unlucky. In my opinion, draft picks are the most overrated thing in hockey and there are a million other ways to improve your roster than to hope you get lucky in the draft.

Anyway, the Mrazek deal probably won’t be the last one for the Leafs this week.

Expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to Make a Few More Trades

As of right now, the Leafs have a little over $10M in cap-space. That may seem like a lot, but it’s not if they really want to improve their roster.

If Toronto really wants to make a splash in free agency and improve their roster, there are three players who can give them a ton of cap relief:

• Jake Muzzin: $5.625M (2 years left)
• Alex Kerfoot: $3.5M (1 year left)
• Justin Holl: $2M (1 year left)

All of these contracts are tradeable and if they were to move on from all three, it would free up another $11.125M, giving Toronto a total of $21.3M to use in free agency.

If they traded all three, their roster would look something like this:

• Forwards:
  • Michael Bunting – Auston Matthews – Mitch Marner
  • TBD – John Tavares – William Nylander
  • TBD – David Kampf – TBD
  • Wayne Simmonds – Nick Abruzzese – Kyle Clifford
• Defense:
  • Morgan Rielly – T.J. Brodie
  • Mark Giordano – Timothy Liljegren
  • TBD – TBD
• Goalies:
  • TBD
  • Erik Källgren

With the cap-space, the Leafs would have the ability to find a $5M (ish) top-six left-winger, if they filled the other TBD spots in-house with someone like Nick Robertson, Alex Steeves, Joey Anderson.

Then, they could re-sign Rasmus Sandin and/or Ilya Lubushkin and still have some cap-space left over to find another top-four defenseman at $5M(ish) as well.

Even with that type of money tied up to a top-six forward and top-four defenseman, Toronto would still have around $5-6M for a starting goalie, which is important.

In order to better their roster, Toronto should look to trade Muzzin, Kerfoot and Holl because it gives them the best opportunity to secure another top-six forward, top-four defenseman and/or starting goaltender for next season.