The Toronto Maple Leafs odds to win the Stanley Cup got significantly lower this week.
The Toronto Maple Leafs already play in the NHL's toughest division, and haven't won a Stanley Cup in almost 60 years, so anything that makes their task more difficult isn't really apprecaited at this point.
Unfortunately, their opponets do not care and thanks to a major injury and poorly run team that won't even make the playoffs, it just got harder for the Leafs.
To be sure, they still have a better chance to win than usual, it's just that it's harder now than it was last week.
It just got way harder for the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup
The NHL Salary Cap is a massive factor in who wins the Stanley Cup each year. Teams that avoid making mistakes can build better rosters, and those teams are obviously going to have better odds of winning.
Since mistakes with the cap are so costly, it's extremely furstrating to see teams bail out other team's when they don't need to, and that's exactly what happened on Friday when the Ducks actualy paid the Rangers for Jacob Trouba and took on his entire cap hit.
Trouba makes $8 million dollars, and only player the Rangers had to take back can easily be sent to the AHL or waived, and they will have cleared the full $8 million from their cap this year and next year.
This is significant because Trouba was a boat anchor who made their team worse and took up a huge amount of cap space. Now that he is gone, they automatically get better and they can turn around and add $8 million dollars worth of players between now and the Trade Deadline.
The Rangers, who have a top-ten forward in Panarin, a top 4 defenseman in Fox and the best goalie alive, just had their season saved. They already had a better roster than the Leafs, and now they can afford to add the best player available, whoever that may be.
In other news, Tyler Seguin and his $9 million dollar cap hit were just put on the LTIR and is likely out until at least the playoffs. The Stars will be able to re-invcest that money in a much more efficient way, and they too are already better than the Leafs and now have the freedom to get even better than they already are. Then they'll probably get Seguin back for the playoffs where cap hits don't matter.
So because two teams the Leafs are competing with directly to be among the NHL's top teams this year just recieved the gift of a massive amount of cap space, it is now harder for them to win the Stanley Cup.