The Toronto Maple Leafs are still in salary cap trouble and their only way out is sure to punish them.
According to Cap Friendly, the Toronto Maple Leafs are on the books for spending a total salary this season of $95,881,450. The NHL’s hard cap is $83,500,000. That puts the club over their allotment by $12,381,450.
Long Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) gives the Leafs some relief thanks to defenseman Jake Muzzin and his $5,625,000 and goaltender Matt Murray’s $4,687,500 cap hits moving to the other side of the ledger. Muzzin’s and Murray’s salaries together add up to $10,312,500. That means the club is still exceeding the cap by $2,068,950. They still need to find a way to be cap compliant this season.
The biggest problem the Leafs have isn’t necessarily that they need to shed salary, it’s that they are over the cap and they still don’t have an acceptable blue-line.
Update On the Toronto Maple Leafs Cap Space Problems
The easiest solution to their cap problem for the Maple Leafs is to trade expensive talent out for cheaper option(s). TJ Brodie, Calle Jarnkrok and Sam Lafferty combine to make over $8 million.
Moving one of the Core Four (Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and John Tavares) would immediately quell their worries, but not only do those players’ contract stipulations make that difficult, but there is not point in saving money just to make your team worse.
The only player from the Core Four who would get traded this season is Nylander. He owns a $6,962,366 and is due a big raise for next year. Knowing that GM Brad Treliving needs to get the team to be cap compliant puts other teams at an advantage. Moving Nylander will see the Leafs on the losing end of a deal. Treliving has a history of bad trades when backed into a corner.
It would be an absolute disaster to trade Nylander right now. When facing salary cap trouble, the absolute worst thing you could do is move the best and most value-laden contract you have.
The best person to remove off the team’s 23-player roster is clearly T.J. Brodie and his $5,000,000 AAV because he’s at an age where he likely is in decline, and yet he’s still good enough that the Leafs wouldn’t have to pay anyone to take him.
Treliving will still lose the trade he makes for Brodie since he doesn’t have much leverage to negotiate. It’s a poor situation for the team to find themselves and it’s not a good way for Treliving to have begun his tenure in Toronto.
If there is anyone to blame for the Maple Leafs cap mess, it has to be Treliving. Handing out large contracts to secondary players has very quickly come back to haunt him.