Toronto Maple Leafs: Wasted Cap Space and a Terrible Blue-Line

The Toronto Maple Leafs roster remake isn’t going well.

The Toronto Maple Leafs added Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi, John Klingberg and Ryan Reaves, but consider they lost Michael Bunting, Ryan O’Reilly, Alex Kerfoot, Erik Gustufsson, Luke Schenn, Noel Acciari, Wanye Simmonds, and Erik Kallgren, they seem to be a significantly worse team (by a mile) right now.

Also consider the near certainty that T.J Brodie and Mark Giordano will also decline heavily this year, and things don’t look so hot.

This of course doesn’t count potential additions like Matthews Knies, Nick Robertson, or any other Toronto Marlies or Leafs Prospects who can make an impact next season.

And it doesn’t take into consideration whoever the Leafs will land between now and October, and that almost certainly means defense.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Upgrade Their Blue-Line

Assuming the Leafs can put Jake Muzzin on the LTIR and either do the same thing with Matt Murray or trade him, the Leafs are under the salary cap, but just barely.

Those two players combine for over $10 million, and the Leafs are just under $9 million over the cap today.

But they need to re-sign Ilya Samsonov (one assumes).

Connor Timmins and Giordano combine for $2 million.

Calle Jarnkrok makes $2.1 million.

Sam Lafferty makes $1.1 Million.

T.J Brodie makes $5 million.

That means the Toronto Maple Leafs could scrape together $10 million in cap space if they can move all of those players, though they likely won’t.

As you can see, new GM Brad Treliving painted himself into a corner with the unnecessary and poorly spent cap space given to Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg, Max Domi and David Kampf.

Considering that all four figure to be replacement level players, the Leafs have misspent about $7 million dollars in cap money, which would have been better spent on one star and the promotion of three rookies (two, really, because Reaves is likely not going to play every day).

In order to get any cap space for further roster improvements, the Leafs will have to trade Nylander (which will be a disaster) or move an addition four players (which they almost certainly won’t do, since that would mean just eight players from last year’s team returning, which is nuts.

Since they can’t really do either of those things, they will likely stand pat and enter the season with their current roster (other than moving Murray and signing Samsonov) which is still still good because of all the star players, but is still much worse than the roster that failed to get past the second round.

The Leafs need to upgrade on defense, but instead of taking a big swing with Erik Karlsson they made a stupid move with John Klingberg. Maybe they’ll move TJ Brodie to try to get meaner, but that probably just means someone like Nikita Zadorov, and he sucks.

All in all, as much as you’d like to say “Give Brad Treliving some time, he’s only just started” it’s hard to see a path forward that doesn’t leave the Toronto Maple Leafs with a team significantly worse than last year. (stats naturalstatrick.com).

I like that they can run Knies/Bertuzzi in the top-six on the left side, but they have a very weak offensive bottom six, and their blue-line stinks because it lacks a true number-one, isn’t tough, has one of 2022’s worst players (Klingberg) and features two players who seem to be in major decline (TJ and Gio).

Jake McCabe was so bad in the playoffs that he doesn’t give you that much confidence going forward, so basically we’ve got Rielly – who is what he is at this point – and Timothy Liljegren who the coach clearly doesn’t like all that much.