The Toronto Maple Leafs have, in recent times, relied on bringing players in with either untapped potential or as reclamation projects.
Namely the Toronto Marlies taking a gamble on Joshua Ho-Sang or the Toronto Maple Leafs hedging their bets with the low-cost deal for Michael Bunting, as two examples.
In both scenarios, the gambles paid off – for the Marlies, Ho-Sang became a reliable and productive member of their team, though never quite did enough to earn an NHL deal.
While for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Michael Bunting with the right usage, has proven quite the revelation. He arrived with just 26 NHL games and 14 points to his name. In two years in Toronto, he’s added a further 161 NHL games and 112 points – not bad for a low-cost gamble!
Anthony Mantha Would Be an Ideal Reclamation Project
That’s where we get to Anthony Mantha, who looks like an ideal player for the Toronto Maple Leafs to possibly take a gamble on this summer.
He’s very much a different kind of gamble to the previous two, in that he’s a relative veteran in the NHL by comparison, with 420 games to his name.
However, he hasn’t quite been able to match his output from his early years in Detroit since landing with the Washington Capitals, and this is where the gamble on a change of scenery could be worth taking.
At 6’5″ and 234 pounds, he is very much a different kind of player to those the Maple Leafs generally targeted during the Kyle Dubas years, but that’s not to suggest that the 2013 first-round pick (20th overall) wouldn’t fit in.
Certainly, if you’re Brad Treliving, this is the sort of swing for the fences move that will immediately get people talking about the style you want to infuse in the Leafs line-up.
The big question mark here is how the Washington Capitals handle his contract this summer; a buy-out would be the absolute best case scenario for the Maple Leafs, as it’d make him more cheaply available.
The alternative is trying to find a way, by means of salary retention, a three-team deal or perhaps a combination of both and shipping salary out (looking at you, Matt Murray) to fit his $6.5 million contract into an already very tight salary structure.
He has had some down years in Washington and has had some health struggles, but this isn’t to say he couldn’t find his game and get back to the 50-point form he was showing in Detroit.
Certainly, with his off-ice concerns, Mantha is a risky proposition, but the Toronto Maple Leafs might just be one of the best teams in the league for the manner in which they’re seen to support their players in all facets of their lives.
Mantha, due to his cap hit, is never going to be anyone’s first choice but on sheer size and unwillingness to be bullied, he could be a very useful top-six addition when you consider the reasonable likelihood that Alex Kerfoot and Michael Bunting might’ve priced themselves off the roster.