The Toronto Maple Leafs have made the best of their goaltending situation, but that doesn’t mean they should be satisfied.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were staring down the barrel of a five year commitment to Jack “No More Tears” Campbell and wisely decided against it.
In the NHL you can only predict the performance of the most elite goaltenders. Everyone else might as well just spin a wheel to see whether they will be good or bad.
Therefore, unless you have one of the five best goalies in the NHL (Ilya Shesterkin, Ilya Sorokin, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Connor Hellebuyck or Juuse Saros) it doesn’t matter who your goalies is, as long as you didn’t pay that much for them, and you haven’t committed to them long-term.
This way, if anyone really good becomes available, you can make a move.
The reasoning behind this thought process is that the opportunity cost of having a mid range goalie (i,e Demko, Markstrom or Andersen) is larger than the gap between what you can expect from a replacement-level goalie vs a mid-range goalie. In other words, the cost to go from a replacement-level goalie to a mid-range goalie is more than the upgrade is worth.
With no good options, the Leafs settled on two reclamation projects. Matt Murray has 2 seasons left on a deal that Ottawa is paying 25% of, giving him a cap-hit under $5 million. Ilya Samsonov is signed for 1 year at $1.8 million, meaning the Leafs are only spending roughly 8% of their cap on goalies.
The key to this strategy is flexibility. Matt Murray has such an injury history that if he plays so poorly that the Leafs can’t use him, he can almost certainly be labeled as injured without raising any questions.
At which point they can try to bring in another goalie. Sure, there is no guarantee you can find one, or even that you can put Murray on the LTIR, but the possibility that you could lessens the risk significantly.
The reason Matt Murray was a smart pick up is that it’s extremely, extremely, extremely unlikely that he ends up playing bad and that the Leafs get stuck with him, unable to make other moves.
That however, is irrelevant. The Leafs do not have an elite goalie, so they should never stop trying to get one.
Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Stop Searching for a New Goalie
The Leafs might get good goaltending from the goalie they have, or they might find themselves looking for a new one in mid-season. At worst, they will probably re-evaluate next summer and try to find out if any of the top goalies are available.
They should keep their eye on Ilya Sorokin.
He is 27 and has been one of the best goalies in the NHL for the last two seasons after putting up numbers that are ridiculous in the KHL for six seasons prior to that. He is signed for this season and next season at the dirt-cheap cap-hit of $4 million dollars.
The New York Islanders are a horrible team that has been run into the ground by Lou Lamoriello, who has no business running an NHL team anymore.
The Islanders will soon fire Lamoriello, and at that point they are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they have an aging roster filled with expensive mediocre players. With zero chance of winning while Sorokin is cheap, they will be forced to trade their franchise goalie.
It seems unlikely that he’d re-sign in his prime and forgo his one big chance at a huge contract, so he will likely be a UFA after the 2023-24 season, which means that if the Islanders appear to be missing the playoffs, he could very well likely be the biggest prize at this year’s trade deadline.
And if he isn’t traded in season, he will surely be available next summer when the Islander realize they have to recoup assets or risk losing him for nothing.
The Toronto Maple Leafs need to keep a close eye on this situation and be ready to strike when and if Sorokin becomes available.