Toronto Maple Leafs: The NHL Needs a Higher Salary Cap

Simply put, the salary cap imposed on NHL teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, is broken and must be fixed.

Right now, we may be in off-season mode where teams are allowed to sit above the cap limits, but it is fundamentally affecting teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs ability to do business.

Across the league right now, you currently have 12 teams sitting above the cap limit, with a further 4 teams teetering within $1 million of it (per CapFriendly). That is half the league.

Realistically you must start questioning whether it’s sustainable for the NHL to allow teams to shoot over the cap, especially given nearly all those teams still have restricted free agents yet to be renewed.

Toronto Maple Leafs Could Use Cap Relief

The most obvious way the Toronto Maple Leafs are suffering as a result of the salary cap is the fact that talented young drafted-and-developed defenseman, Rasmus Sandin is yet to have his contract renewed. This, in large part, as the team are already over the cap.

Slightly less obvious is the fact that other teams are playing with the boundaries of the rules. Take the Tampa Bay Lightning placing Nikita Kucherov on injury reserve all year only for him to be fighting fit for the playoffs.

Likewise, look to a team like the Vegas Golden Knights. They are currently running at over $10 million above the cap and are circumventing the rules somewhat with their acquisition of Shea Weber’s contract, but may become easy prey as a result.

Of course, the Toronto Maple Leafs have historically played the same game with long-term injured reserve. Stephane Robidas’ contract springs to mind.

Perhaps more frustrating for all of these teams is that because of their individual cap situations, nobody is able to run a full 23-man roster.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have routinely lost players to waiver claims as a result of not being able to run a full roster and you have to imagine teams might be playing it a bit rough-and-ready in terms of potentially having to ice players that aren’t fully fit.

Surely the league didn’t have the intention of teams only taking 20-man rosters to games when the salary cap was first implemented. It’s not ideal to suggest that players sit in the press-box, but surely it’s more appealing than having no real backup plans.

There is no easy solution to the problem either. It was designed to increase year-on-year and obviously that hasn’t happened in recent times (there is still hope), but you have to imagine teams would still be dealing with a similar conundrum even with more money available to spend.

Unless anyone has any smart ideas, the Toronto Maple Leafs will just have to continue to make do with the current situation and rely upon the talents of Brandon Pridham to hack the system (as best he can) for them.