The Toronto Maple Leafs Can Still Sign 3x Cheap Potential Stars

The Toronto Maple Leafs cap situation is horrible because incoming GM Brad Treliving spent $11 million dollars on 4 x replacement players (Klingberg, Domi, Reaves, Kampf).

However, despite the Toronto Maple Leafs still being nearly $7 million dollars over the salary cap, there is hope for improvement.

Once Matt Murray is gone, the Leafs will only need to move around $3 million to be cap compliment.

TJ Brodie, Calle Jarnkrok, Connor Timmons, Sam Lafferty and Marc Giordano combine to make about $11 million dollars, so there are your candidates for players to move.

The Leafs can solve their cap problems by moving several different combinations of these players out, and signing three players who all offer major upside, and whom all could be had cheaper than expected due to various circumstances.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that the Leafs do nothing but move Brodie and then try to get by by promoting the likes of Topi Niemela and Mikko Kokonen, although their blue-line is already extremely thin.

With the following three players, the Toronto Maple Leafs not only get better, they get more exiting, better offensively and they get tougher to play against.

Here are three players the Leafs should still be pursuing, all of whom have star upside.

Toronto Maple Leafs UFA Cheap Star Options: Patrick Kane

Kane is only a year removed from a 90 point season, and he has multiple Stanley Cups and is still one of the most fun players in the NHL when he’s on.

Most Toronto Maple Leafs fans still probably remember the game he had back in March where he torched the Leafs for a goal and three assists.

Kane is likely going to be even better next year than he was last year (where he finished under a point per game for just the second time ever) because immediately after the off-season he had hip surgery.

Since he played for the Rangers right up until they were eliminated by the Devils in the playoffs, it’s basically a guarantee that he was playing hurt.  The drop off in points was pretty significant, so likely he was hurt for a while and this impacted his performance.

He is only 34, which for regular players is pretty old, but if you look at the elite-superstar hall of famers section of the NHL, there are a lot of them who were still stars while they were pushing 40.

Kane isn’t going to sign a deal until the season starts and he’s ready to play, as the recovery for his surgery is going to see him miss training camp.

This creates the perfect opportunity for the Toronto Maple Leafs who are in cap trouble and desperate for a bargain.

Kane presumably would love to play with Auston Matthews, and adding him to the lineup for a cool $1 million post-surgery show-me deal would work in everyone’s favour.

Under Kyle Dubas I don’t think the Leafs would have been interested in Kane (or Domi, or Bertuzzi for that matter) but under Treliving I think it’s going to happen.

Getting Patrick Kane at half the price of Cale Jarnkrok would go a long way to compensating for the fact that Tyler Bertuzzi makes $4 million more than Michael Bunting was getting for what promises to be extremely similar production.

Free Money

Signing Jesse Puljujarvi will be like finding a wallet on the street with no ID in it that is stuffed full of money, then taking that money to a casino and tripling it.

The Toronto Maple Leafs need to be making bets like this if they are ever going to properly make use of the salary cap and operate effectively within its rules.

This is the exact opposite of signing Domi or Klingberg – i.e its a small bet with a big upside, instead of a big bet with little upside.

Puljujarvi is only 25 and he wasn’t qualified by the Carolina Hurricanes after it was revealed he needed double hip surgery.

Available to anyone willing to take a small risk, this is a huge-upside move that teams should be falling over themselves to make.

In the last four seasons, Puljujarvi has been over 54% expected goals the entire time.

Sure, he doesn’t score like a 4th overall pick should or is expected to, but he’s extremely effective because at 5v5 (where 80% of the game is played) he dominates.

You put him on the ice, you win those minutes.

It’s as simple as that.  The fact that he’s seen as a bust, and is coming off surgery on not one, but two hips makes him available and cheap.

This is the kind of thing Kyle Dubas was good at, and I suspect that Treliving is not, but let’s give him a chance –  the Toronto Maple Leafs can significantly upgrade their team