The Toronto Maple Leafs Have the Most Poorly Spent $7 Million in the NHL

A lot gets made about the Toronto Maple Leafs allocating over $40 million dollars to four players.

This, however, is only because the average fan doesn't understand that money spent on star players is among the highest value of any money an NHL team spends.

The Leafs had the NHL's deepest team in 2023 when they added Ryan O'Reilly and Jake McCabe to the roster. They couldn't have done that if spending all that money on Morgan Rielly and the Core Four was as bad as people say.

They could have repeated as the deepest team last year, but Brodie declined, Samsonov fell off and Treliving mismanaged the $20 million he had to spend last summer, which is how they ended up with $11 million worth of healthy scratches during Game Six vs Boston in this year's Playoffs (Samsonov, Reaves, Brodie, Timmins).

The Leafs must learn from their mistakes, which is why I bring up the $7 million dollars that they have already misspent for next season. This is a major error which they will need to clear up before next season starts.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Have the Most Poorly Spent $7 Million in the NHL

David Kampf makes $2.4 as the highest paid fourth liner in the NHL.

Ryan Reaves makes $1.35 and the franchise is humiliated every time it's mentioned that they signed him for three years at age 36.

Conor Timmins makes $1.1 which is too much for a depth player who should only make the league minimum. (salary info capfriendly.com).

Calle Jarnkrok makes $2.1 million, which is too much for what he does.

All together, that's $6.95 million dollars that is poorly spent on four fourth liners.

The Toronto Maple Leafs must get rid of all four players and replace them with players on entry-level, league-minimum contracts.

If the Leafs replaced all four on the roster with Easton Cowan, Roni Hirvonen, Nick Abruzzese, and Topi Niemela they wouldn't be much worse (if any) and they would have an extra $3.58 million to spend on other players.

That would be enough to retain a reasonably priced Max Domi, or it would be enough to pay most of Jusse Saros' salary. Either way, it's a lot of money spent currently on nothing.

Making smarter decisions on depth players will allow the Toronto Maple Leafs to add more talent to their roster at the top end. It is absolutely imperative that they get rid of Reaves, Kampf, Timmins and Jarnkrok over the summer.