The Toronto Maple Leafs are well above the salary-cap right now, but there are still a few players they could sign.
We’re almost two weeks into free agency and the Toronto Maple Leafs have already been very active. Depending on your opinion, you could either think that they’ve wasted a ton of money or you could have fallen in love with their signings.
Personally, I’ve loved every move they’ve made thus far and think that Tyler Bertuzzi, John Klingberg, Max Domi and even Ryan Reeves will help this roster.
Bertuzzi is the exact player this roster needed and for one year a $5.5M, it’s good value. If he plays alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, he’s going to score 30-plus goals and will be an agitator who opponents will hate to play against.
If Michael Bunting was able to score 23 goals and register 63 points beside Matthews and Marner, Bertuzzi will be able to blow past those numbers.
As for the biggest defensive signing in Klingberg, I know that he hasn’t been an analytics darling, but Toronto needed another player to run their power-play unit. Morgan Reilly can run PP1, while Klingberg gives them serious help on the blue-line for PP2.
In addition to that, he’s still someone who can play top-four minutes and proved that during the Dallas Stars run to the Stanley Cup a few years ago.
The Leafs may be over the salary-cap right now, but they’re only a few player moves away from being well under, so if they decided to trade one of (or all) Matt Murray, Calle Jarnkrok, TJ Brodie and William Nylander, there’s plenty of money left to sign the following players.
Here are three UFA’s the Toronto Maple Leafs should still target.