Toronto Maple Leafs: Time Vindicates Kyle Dubas on Big Contracts

The Toronto Maple Leafs, specifically their rookie (at the time) general manager took a lot of heat when they (he) signed Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner to contract extensions after their entry-level deals.

The Toronto Maple Leafs took heat for three things specifically: 1) the high cap hit, 2) the term not being the maximum, and 3) waiting too long to sign these deals.

At the time, all three of these things were reasonable complaints, but time has made the contracts team-friendly, thus vindicating the Leafs and their GM, while proving the critics completely wrong.

Or at least it would have, if the team had won a playoff series at any time along the way.  The Leafs losing in seven straight first round playoff series makes it almost impossible to fairly analyze anything to do with the team.

Even though the losses were pretty fluky (the Leafs had a 50% or better expected-goals rating in 16 of their last 19 playoff games, and still managed to lose three series) and even though the referees blew game six so badly that they basically forced the Leafs to win five games in order to advance, it still makes it hard, after seven years, to try be positive about this team at all.

But let’s try.

Results and curses aside, I think the Leafs still take a bad and unfair rap for the contracts they signed their two franchise players to.  Those contracts are giving the Leafs team-friendly cap hits, and have been for years, and to my mind, that means Dubas made good deals.

Let’s break it down. (Cap information from capfriendly.com, stats from naturalstattrick.com).

Did the Toronto Maple Leafs Wait Too Long?

The biggest criticism you can make against the Leafs for these contracts is that they waited so long to negotiate them. The implication of this criticism is that if the Leafs had of tried to sign their two best players earlier, the contracts would have cost less.

Kyle Dubas was named the Toronto Maple Leafs GM on May 11, 2018.  Auston Matthews didn’t sign his extension until February 5th 2019.   Marner didn’t sign until September, 2019.

In the NHL you can sign players to an extension a year before their contract expires.  Since they were rookies at the same time, both Marner and Matthews had their entry-level deals expire at the end of the 18-19 season, and were eligible for extensions around the time Kyle Dubas was first hired.

The Leafs waited nine months to sign Matthews, and over a year to sign Marner.  Would the team have gotten the players signed cheaper if they acted earlier?

The risk of waiting with most players is that they suddenly break out and you are on the hook for more money.  This famously happened to Montreal when PK Subban won the Norris Trophy on a bridge deal.

It wasn’t a real risk for the Leafs with these players, however.  Whatever happened in year three, it was already clear that Matthews and Marner’s next contracts would be negotiated from the perspective that they were two of the best players in the world.

It was clear even then that these were franchise players, so other than an annual rising cap and re-adjustment of the market, the Leafs didn’t have to worry about signing their two players before they broke out.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to think the contracts would be better (for the team) if they were signed earlier, but if I know that, so do the Leafs.  If they could have signed them earlier, they would have,  but what incentive did the players have to do so?

I fully agree with the critics that the Leafs should have signed these deals earlier, I just don’t know why the players would have done that.   Some players will trade the uncertainty of the future for guaranteed money, but that can be countered with an insurance policy for a lot less money than it will cost you to sign early when you know you are a franchise player.

This criticism has always struck me as unfair.  If the Leafs dithered and in fact Matthews and Marner were not allowed to sign a contract early, then that would be a disaster.  But that is clearly not what happened.

RFA players have very little leverage in the first place, so refusing to sign the day they are eligible is one of their strongest moves.  Something you could blame the Leafs for is not acting more aggressively when Marner and Matthews were on their entry-level deals, but they should get a pass for this.

Was the Term Long Enough ?

Ideally the Leafs would have signed both Matthews and Marner to twin eight-year maximum length extensions.  Instead Marner got six years and Matthews five.

Again, it is obvious that not getting eight year deals sucks for the Leafs and their fans.  This is really similar to the criticism that they should have signed them a year out from the expiration of their ELCs in that It’s such an obviously good move for the team, why would the player do it?

In order to get the players to sign those deals, the Leafs would have had to give them even higher cap hits.  Buying out UFA seasons from players who a) know they are among the best in the world and b) are fully aware of the TV, Expansion and Gambling deals on the horizon is clearly going to be expensive.

Almost no one mentions this when they are ripping the Leafs for these contracts.  Eight years would be nice, but five years with a cap hit lower by several million dollars might actually be better.

Much like the previous criticism, this one ignores the player’s agency as humans who are not complete idiots.

Before Covid, the NHL salary cap was set to see it’s biggest ever increase because the league was going to legalize gambling, take in a massive expansion fee from Seattle and broker a new, massive, TV deal.   Since the cap is tied to revenue it was bound to go up.  If I know this, and you know this, why do we criticize the contracts as if the agents for Marner and Matthews did not know this?

The Leafs couldn’t have had their players come up for new deals at a worse time.  A year before, they wouldn’t have been able to bet on the cap going up. A year later Covid would have destroyed the league’s revenue.

Frankly, Marner and Matthews had no reason to sign max-length deals when they knew the cap and the average salary would possibly be going up a lot, so it was potentially more expensive for them to sell their UFA years than it would be for any other player ever, up to that time.

Again, in a perfect world, they both sign eight year contracts. Leafs fans and critics are right to lament that, but it’s unfair to blame the Leafs for not getting the max length when they are  negotiating against professional agents who know that only an world-wide pandemic can prevent the salary cap from almost doubling in the next five or so years.

In one way, I think Toronto did get lucky: had they paid for the extra years with a higher cap hit, and then the cap froze for two years (and barely moved in the third year when it was unfrozen) they might have been completely screwed.  As it was, they may have won absolutely nothing, but they were something like the best team in the league this entire time, and were easily good enough to have won.

The Average Annual Value

The Cap Hit is the contract divided by the number of years it runs for.  The cap hit for Marner was just under $11 million and for Matthews it was just under $12 million.

At the time, it looked egregious, but the argument for it was that if you overpay now, you might get some team-friendly deals down the road.

A lot of people disagreed with that.  Some pro-Leafs, advanced-stat, contract and career forecasting experts said it was virtually impossible for Marner to ever be worth his contact.

Often, as I try to take a positive view of things, I find myself arguing against people who use results as a bludgeon, but really have no idea what they’re talking about otherwise.  In this case, I was the one with no real argument other than I was just happy the team locked up their players, and figured the expansion, tv, gambling thing would take care of the problems.

The people whose opinions I respect all said Marner would never be worth the money. I was fine with that, because as a fan, I just want to watch him play.  But I am  pleasantly surprised that exceeded even the wildest expectations.

Life is funny, and even though it often seems like people want to take down the Leafs and rip them for everything they do regardless of whether it’s smart or not (usually justified because they are a hilarious franchise that deserves it), the one criticism they were absolutely 100% correct-at-the-time and 100% right-to-make turns out to completely wrong.

But really, other than Paul Marner, who is reading this and saying “I always knew Marner would be a top three forward and the best winger in the NHL.”?   There are two players in the NHL who are definitely better than Marner, and they are McDavid and Matthews.  You could probably put Cale Makar on that list, but as the fourth best player he’s still a crazy bargain for what he brings to the table.

It turns out that the Toronto Maple Leafs signed  Matthews and Marner to contracts that are delivering massive value to the team.

Last year Auston  Matthews won the Hart Trophy and scored 60 goals in 60 games while having the best overall season anyone in the NHL has had since 1996.  He is currently the best player in the world, and will turn just 25 this season.

With two years left on his deal at an $11.6 cap hit, the Leafs are getting an absolute steal.  According to the Athletic, Matthews  is giving the Leafs a insane ton of value over what they are paying him per year on his deal.  According to their formula, Matthews has the 8th best contract in the entire NHL based on the difference between what he’s paid and what his production is worth.

The cost of getting Matthews so cheap is that they walk him to Unrestricted Free Agency at the end of his age 26 season.

As for Marner, he was the NHL’s scoring leader from the time he returned from injury in mid-January last year,  and he also scored at a 50 goal pace and was 4th in goals during that time.

He was the NHL’s most valuable player in the second half of last season.  With three years left on his deal, the Athletic says he’s something slightly more than 50% more than his current salary.  Not as much as Matthews (or the absolutely insane Makar and MacKinnon deals) but still very good.