The Indefensible Signing of Oliver Ekman-Larrson Just a Routine Leafs Error

The Toronto Maple Leafs made a huge mistake when they overpaid Oliver Ekman-Larsson in free-agency.

The Toronto Maple Leafs gave the aging former Phoenix Coyotes star a contract that is far too long and which has way too high of a cap hit.

The signing was a bad usage of the Leafs limited cap space and frankly, it was misguided in pretty much every way.

It's a nearly indefensible signing, which, unfortunately is now routine for the Leafs.

The Indefensible Signing of Oliver Ekman-Larrson Just a Routine Leafs Error

Like nearly every Leafs contract signed recently, you have to ask who they were competing against. Was their another team that wanted to give four years to a 33 year-old bottom-pairing defender? And if so, why didn't the Leafs let them have what they wanted? (cap info puckpedia.com).

Florida won a Cup with OEL playing on their 3rd pairing and making $2.5 million, which was a great value-signing for one year.

Giving him an extra million and three extra years is just stupid. He's worse now than he was last year because he's 33 and that's what happens to NHL players - they get drastically worse in their 30s.

Ekman-Larsson's days as a viable top-four option are over. He is a bad top-four player and an adequet bottom-pairing one. (Adequate because though he has good stats, he doesn't have any upside).

The problem is that in a salary capped NHL, if you pay your star players, which the Leafs are, you have to go cheap on depth players.

And it's a strategy that makes sense and is predicated on the fact that in the NHL, the difference between the actual output and contributions of all non-star players is very similar - the worst player and the best non-star player are not different enough to warrant paying the best non-star a lot of money.

This is why the Leafs decided to give half their salary cap limit to five players. Since they are still doing that, signing expensive bottom-pairing defenseman doesn't make any sense.

Furthermore, check this out:

Last year, OEL played on Florida's 3rd pairing and posted an Expected Goals Rating of 54% and an Actual Goals Rating of 55%, winning his minutes 49-40.

Mark Giordano, meanwhile, played on Toronto's 3rd pairing for the league minimum had a 54% Expected Goals Rating and a 56% Actual Goals Rating, winning his minutes 32-25. (all stats from naturalstattrick.com).

Assuming OEL doesn't decline any further, the Leafs are paying almost $3 million more for what they were getting for the league minimum, and no 4 year commitment.

Worse, with Liljegren's raise, the Leafs will be potentially paying their bottom pairing $6.5 million for the same results they were getting for $2.5 million.

That is just horrendous management, and, keep in mind, that if OEL plays in the top four, it means that Jake McCabe isn't and the Leafs paid all those draft picks for a 3rd pairing guy instead.

The Leafs could have just kept the $3.5 million and used it to avoid LTIR and bank cap space throughout the season, and then strike at the Trade Deadline where there are many more options, and usually some stars, available.

This would have let them try to break in and audition players like Kokkanen and Niemela, while buying them time to make smarter moves. Unfortunately, Treliving likes to chase names and seems extremely gun-shy about trades since he helped turn the Florida Panthers into a juggernaut.

Anyway you slice it, the Oliver Ekman-Larsson signing is indefensible. It is a bad signing by a bad GM with no clue what he's doing.