The Toronto Maple Leafs would be crazy to extend forward Bobby McMann, instead of trading him.
Forward Kiefer Sherwood signed an extension worth $5.75M this week, setting the market. You can make a very good comparision of Sherwood and McMann. Both players are around the similar age, games played and career-high's. McMann is a little bigger and faster, but they're both top-nine forwards at best.
With 18 goals in 49 games, the Sharks saw a bright future with Sherwood and decided to lock him up for five more years. San Jose has a projected $48M in cap-space next year, but will have to pay Macklin Celebrini, Michael Misa and Will Smith a ton of money the year after, so this still feels rich for a third-liner.
While the #leafs continue to explore the trade market on Bobby McMann, they haven't ruled out signing him to a new contract. Yesterday's Kiefer Sherwood extension (5x$5.75M AAV) is a favorable comparable for McMann, although he likely has to come in under $5M to stay in Toronto.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) March 5, 2026
As such, the Leafs should learn from this signing and make sure they don't do the same with McMann.
We all know that the 29 year old forward has a solid set of skills, but he doesn't need to be a part of the future. McMann is a replaceable forward who has true value at the trade deadline right now, so you need to capitalize on that. Whether it's a first, second or even a prospect, the Leafs are better off with cap-space next year than extending McMann, who is at best, a second-line winger.
Leafs better trade McMann at the deadline
The Leafs would be very silly to pay McMann $5M-plus as he's not a player who you need to build around and letting him walk would be even dumber.
You can criticize Kyle Dubas as much as you want, but he was very good at knowing when to walk away from these types of players. If you look back at the history of the Leafs, there have been a ton of those 15-25 goal scoring wingers who have came and went.
95 percent of the time, the Leafs made the right decision not to pay the player and let them walk in free agency, or trade them. The only time you could argue that Toronto made a mistake was with Zach Hyman, as nobody expcted him to be a 50 goal scorer, and the seven year deal still seems long.
However, in the cases of Connor Brown, Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson, Ondrej Kase, Pierre Engvall, Ilya Mikheyev and Michael Bunting, the Leafs got a ton out of their value and continued to find replaceable players, instead of signing them long-term.
If you have a good pro scouting team, you should be able to add players for "cheap" and turn them into depth scoring machines. At best, McMann is probably going to be a 30 goal scorer once in his career, but his inconsistencies will drive you nuts. He can go three weeks without anyone noticing him, and then has two weeks of greatness.