Rumored Jake McCabe Deal a Huge Loser for the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs, according to internet rumour, are on the verge of signing Jake McCabe to a contract extension.

The numbers making the rounds on Twitter are 6 years x $5 million+ per year. The Toronto Maple Leafs are clearly not a well-managed team, but even they would balk at paying an extremely average player who is already 31 years-old.

Keep in mind that the Leafs have also committed to the 33 year-old Oliver Ekman-Larsson until 2028, as well as the 31 (this season) year-old Morgan Rielly and the 34 year old Chris Tanev until 2030.

In the NHL, you aren't supposed to give long-term deals to non-star players, let alone ones over 30, let alone four of them at once. This breaks pretty much every analytics-based, as well as every common-sense based rule about managing the salary cap.

Rumored Jake McCabe Deal a Huge Loser for the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Jake McCabe contract extension is a bad idea in every way. I like Jake McCabe, I think he's a good player who is a valuable addition to the team. But realistically, he's too inconsistent to be a star, and while he's an above average second-pairing player, the difference between what he brings to the team vs what the worst player in the NHL might bring amount to less than two wins over a full season.

McCabe shouldn't be re-signed because the Leafs will then have put too much of a committment to too many old defensemen. If the Leafs hadn't signed Tanev and Ekman-Larsson, signing McCabe would be a no-brainer.

But they did, and it's ill-advised to committ to so many old players. The salary cap has been a thing for 20 years now, this should be obvious.

The best option for the Toronto Maple Leafs, is to trade McCabe right now, while his cap-hit is 50% retained and he's worth an absolute ton. The Edmonton Oilers would love to replace Philip Broberg on the cheap. The Leafs could probably get a first round and a top prospect, fully getting back what they paid in the first place.

Trading McCabe would make them slightly worse, but it would allow them to play Timothy Liljegren more, or to possibly promote Topi Niemela, William Villeneuve, or Mikko Kokkonen. None of those guys are going to be better than McCabe, but they do have higher upside, and it's a move that could pay off: essentially, the Leafs would get younger, and they'd have some assets for the trade deadline.

The cost wouldn't be as high as people think, because McCabe is not a star player. He's a slightly above average player who provides great value for $2 milion dollars, and at $5 million has negative value. And that is before he ages and gets worse, which he will do from now on.

It's hard to fathom what the Leafs are thinking when they want to lock in another older non-star player for the long-term. What do they see as the advantages of having 4 x non-star defenseman in the twilights of their careers locked into the team for the entirety of Auston Matthews' prime?

The combo of Riely, Tanev, McCabe and OEL is, at best, if you squint, maybe in the top half of the league, but certainly no better than 12th or so, definitely not in the top ten. It's very average, has no upside, and lacks an elite player to lead the group.

The last time the Leafs played a game that counted, they had committed to just one of these players, and there was even hope that Rielly might be the "change" they talked about in the now humiliating end-of-season press conference. Instead, they are going to enter the season with the NHL's oldest, most average, lowest upside blue-line - and they are going to have committed to four geezers instead of just one.

The worst part? Barring a miracle, Treliving and Shanahan won't have to live with the consequences of their actions because both will gone if the Leafs fail to make at least the conference finals.