Expiring Deals Give the Maple Leafs Cap Flexibility and a Huge Advantage
One of the silliest debates in the history of the NHL has to be if the Toronto Maple Leafs will be buyers or sellers at this year's Trade Deadline.
It would be criminal for the Toronto Maple Leafs to not go for it during a year of Auston Matthew's prime, so the debate is ridiculous from the start.
In addition to that, the Leafs have almost unlimited cap space while so many of their competitors do not.
Now I know that technically the Leafs are already capped-out, but its the number of expiring deals on their roster that gives them so much flexibility. (info from capfriendly.com).
Expiring Deals Give the Maple Leafs Cap Flexibility and a Huge Advantage
Most NHL trades these days feature an actual hockey trade, with an additional couple of players moving between teams to make the salaries even.
The Leafs don't have a ton of tradable assets because they have already moved next year's first- rounder and their next three second-rounders.
One way to make up for that is to take advantage of other team's financial needs by taking on players who have contracts beyond this year in exchange for an expiring deal.
By lowering the other team's financial obligations, the Leafs could theoretically get a lower price in actual hockey assets.
This is because they have 12 players on expiring deals.
Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi, Bobby McCann, Nick Robertson, Noah Gregor, TJ Brodie, Timothy Liljegren, Mark Giordano, Simon Benoit, William Lagesson, Martin Jones and Ilya Samsonov.
These players combine to make $24 million dollars.
While the Leafs would never trade all of them, it does give them a ton of flexibility that most teams do not have. You can criticize Brad Treliving for having one of the worst summers in recent memory, but at least he didn't make any long-term commitments. (Other than David Kampf, which was a horrendous deal).
Most NHL teams who are competitive this year do not have any cap space, and most of them do not have as many expiring contracts as the Leafs do.
That means that the Leafs could have an advantage in trading for upgrades. The problem for the Leafs is not a lack of cap space, it's a GM who appears to be obsessed with name-brand players and doesn't seem keen on admitting and fixing his mistakes.
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But cap space? The Leafs really shouldn't have an issue there. They can whoever they want, and that makes this a perfect year to go big at the deadline.