Toronto Maple Leafs Play Hardball With Wrong Guy

The narrative that the Toronto Maple Leafs new GM is a tough negotiator ready to kill the team’s country-club atmosphere is, in a word, disgusting.  It’s untrue, and it’s wrongheaded.

The Toronto Maple Leafs used to pay their star players and not worry too much about it, because the math says that’s what you should do. 

In a salary cap league where star players drive results, the optimum way to spend money is the “studs and duds” way where you spend on elite players and go cheap everywhere else.

This works because in the NHL about 90% of players are worth between zero and 1 win over the course of the year, and therefore the value of non-stars is way below what they tend to get paid.

If you don’t believe this works, consider that the Leafs just finished last season as the NHL’s deepest team.  They have spent four seasons (since Keefe was hired) posting a +.600 points percentage.

And they did that despite signing all their best players right before an unprecedented salary cap freeze caused by a worldwide pandemic.  People seem to forget Dubas made all his bets when a new TV Deal, Legalized Gambling and an Expansion Team were on the horizon.

There is a lot of criticism about how much he payed his “core four” but for all that criticism, people forget to in any context.  At the time, it was a reasonable bet, and that is proved by the fact that things worked out pretty good even in a worst case scenario.

Four years as a top contender where they got extremely unlucky in the playoffs.   Remember how they were 0-11 in elimination games? As much as that sucks, there was less than 1% probability of that happening, so it’s so unlikely as to be beyond criticism. Like the Bills losing 4 straight Super Bowls in the early 90s, or the Montreal Expos failing to win the 1994 World Series, it’s a situation that so bizarre it can’t be anyone’s fault.

Toronto Maple Leafs Play Hardball With Wrong Guy

Anyways, to respond to the previous regime’s correct tendency to pay their star players by playing hardball with them is really dumb.  It’s emotional and silly, and it stems from looking at results and making judgements that are not in line with what really happened.

It’s OK for fans to feel this way, but managers are supposed to know better.

It isn’t clear that Treliving does.

Otherwise, he’d already have Nylander and Matthews signed.   He would have already either recouped an asset for Ilya Samsonov or he’d have him signed too. 

Going to arbitration and ruining the relationship between the team and their goalie is dumb.  Celebrating that the team is playing hardball with their players is worse.

The Leafs are a billion dollar corporation.  The players are real people.  I always cheer for the players to get as much as they can, even if it’s not good for the team.

If the Leafs didn’t want to pay Samsonov, they should have picked up a pick for him while they could.

Now they’ve upset him.

They’ve ruined any chance of a team-friendly deal.

They’ve ensured he leaves anyways and for nothing.

And now they’ll have to overpay him on a one-year deal or walk away.

His confidence will also be hurt by the hearing he has to sit through in which the team that helped him reserect his career explains why he isn’t worth a raise.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the first thing Brad Treliving did wasn’t to just light the Leafs cap space on fire like the Joker in the Dark Knight.  

But it’s pretty hard to keep a straight face when you tell the guy who lead the NHL in high-danger save-percentage that he can’t get a raise directly after spending $11 million dollars on 4 x replacement players.

Had the Leafs just stuck with Niemela, Hirvonen, Steeves and Abruzzese instead of Klingberg, Domi, Reaves and Kampf they could have signed Samsonov without ruining his confidence.

Then, if those guys weren’t getting it done, make some moves in March with their plethora of cap space.   Treliving should have just paid Nylander and paid Samonov, then worried about the bottom of the lineup.

The fact that he didn’t is why he’s currently ranked below John Ferguson Jr in the pantheon of Toronto Maple Leafs GMs.