Kudos to Treliving as Toronto Maple Leafs Enter Season with Cap Flexibility

According to puckpedia.com, the Toronto Maple Leafs are over the cap by about one-million dollars.

This amount does not include PTOs offered to Steven Loretnz or Max Pacioretty, but it does include the contracts handed out by the Toronto Maple Leafs to Jani Hakanpaa and Nick Robertson.

Last year, the Leafs tried to set their entire roster in October then stupidly stuck to their guns and didn't upgrade their team (short of adding a couple of unecessary bad players) at the trade deadline. This year, they appear to have learned their lesson as their current roster isn't anything close to finished.

Depite having negative cap space, the Leafs are in a rather good position cap-wise to improve their team later.

Kudos to Treliving as Toronto Maple Leafs Enter Season with Cap Flexibility

Treliving's biggest error as Leafs GM so far was knowing that he had $8.5 million dollars in expired players who were not earning their money in TJ Brodie and Ilya Samsonov, and he still entered the playoffs with them on his roster.

This year, the Leafs are unlikely to make the same mistake twice. Instead of jettisoning their dead-weight and spending the money this summer, the Leafs seem to have made the smart call to add at the deadline when costs are cheaper and more star players are available (as some teams that are optimistic now will have given up by then).

The Leafs have a ton of money on their current roster that they could trade to create some cap space. The trick is to liquidate those assets and spend all the savings on one single superstar to have the biggest impact.

This is what a team with so many usable cheap players (Cowan, McMann, Robertson, Knies, Dewar) has the option to do. These players give the Leafs a ton of upside, but their main use is that they are adequete NHL players at a dirt-cheap cap-hit.

The player the Leafs need to get rid of are David Kampf ($2.4), Calle Jarnkrok ($2.1), Ryan Reaves ($1.35), Conor Timmins ($1.1) and Jake McCabe ($2 million). (Note look here for the explanation of why the Leafs should trade McCabe).

Except for Mccabe who is quite good, none of the other players woud be missed. The reason their cap-hits give the Leafs flexibility to act is because they cost more money than they are worth and can easily be replaced, with no loss to the team, by rookies or players on PTO who sign for the league minimum.

That is just short of $9 million dollars, and you'd need at least three rookies to fill out the roster, so you'd have about $6.2 million to spend on the one additional player you need.

And there is no need to spend it now. The smart teams just audition their prospects until the trade deadline. Maybe you find a diamond in the rough and maybe you don't, but at least you get the chance to try. Then March rolls around and you make one big trade for your biggest need.

In the Leafs case, it's probably a top defenseman. Maybe the Islanders are eliminated by then and maybe they want to get something for Noah Dobson before he walks in free-agency. Who knows?

The point here is that the Leafs have time to wait, and the flexibility to move out quite a few expensive players they don't really need.