Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Trade TJ Brodie for Cap Reasons

In order to fix their salary cap issues, the Toronto Maple Leafs should trade TJ Brodie immediately.

Sorry, TJ Brodie fans, but the Toronto Maple Leafs should not be using $5M of their salary-cap on him.

When the organization originally signed him, I thought it was a good move. The team needed a top-pairing defenseman to play alongside Morgan Reilly and Brodie seemed like a logical fit. Although his defensive play has been above-average at times, he’s far from a $5M defenseman.

Unless you’re a world-class shutdown defender, you need to bring some offense from the blue-line in order to be worth $5M per season and unfortunately Brodie brings virtually zero offense. In 196 career games with the Leafs, he has seven goals and 54 points, which isn’t good enough.

For that type of production, you’d be better off paying a player who makes close to the league minimum or giving Connor Timmins a bigger opportunity, who makes $1.1M next season.

I’ve never had an issue paying people who deserve the money. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are worth the salary they make, but I hate seeing overpaid players eating up a large amount of cap-space when they don’t need to.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Trade TJ Brodie This Offseason

If you look at the Leafs roster, I’d say that every single player is getting paid a reasonable amount besides TJ Brodie and Matt Murray.

Even if you think John Tavares makes too much, William Nylander is clearly underpaid so the two of them even themselves out right now. Also, Tavares is arguably one of the most underrated players in the NHL, as he seems to average a point-per-game every campaign and scores between 27-40 goals on a yearly basis.

Anyways, back to Brodie.

If the Leafs were to clear Brodie’s $5M for draft picks, they’d put themselves under the salary-cap, but more importantly would still have a little room to do something else, especially if they get rid of Murray, which they need to.

Not only that, but if the team clears Murray’s contract as well, then the Toronto Maple Leafs will be able to sign or trade for a defenseman of significant value. Brodie is, at best, your fourth-best defenseman on a Stanley Cup winning roster, so the team needs to clear his salary and sign someone who can slide into the top-two.

Whether it’s signing Matthew Dumba or trading for Erik Karlsson, Brodie’s salary is hurting this roster tremendously right now and he needs to be moved.

Brad Treliving is very familiar with Brodie, based on their time together in Calgary, so that may hurt the chances of him being traded but that relationship needs to be put aside in order to help the overall roster.

The Leafs will be much better off if Brodie is traded this offseason.