If last Saturday night’s game against the Edmonton Oilers reassured anything for the Toronto Maple Leafs, it showed how vital Matthew Knies is to this Leafs core. As Knies returned to the lineup Saturday, he provided a spark for a team in need of one on a three-game losing streak, as he potted his 19th of the season, along with an assist.
According to moneypuck.com the Toronto Maple Leafs top line of Knies, Auston Matthews, and Mitch Marner has a 60.6 expected goals, which ranks 11th among forward lines in the NHL.
Matthew Knies is due for a new contract, and the Leafs need to find the perfect balance: they don't want to overpay in the longterm, but they should overpay in the shortterm in order to make a bet on Knies' development in order to secure some team-friendly years down the road.
Complicating this is the fact that both John Tavares and Mitch Marner need new contracts, and the even present threat of an offer-sheet.
Striking the Right Balance w/ Matthew Knies Next Contract and Avoiding Offer Sheets
With offer sheets being around since the mid-80s, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen many sheets thrown around, especially with the young talent in today’s league.
In 2021, the Montreal Canadiens offered Carolina’s Sebastian Aho a five-year contract worth $42.27 million, but the Canes matched the offer. This was a prime example of how offer sheet culture is viewed in today’s league, as then Hurricane GM Don Waddell went back at the Canadiens by offering Jesperi Kotkaniemi a deal that is now over-priced, an offer the Canadiens didn’t match.
Last season, the St. Louis Blues offer sheeted two of Edmonton’s recent first-round picks in Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway. Those offer sheets from St. Louis show that the culture around offer-sheeting in the league is slowly changing and becoming more prominent for GMs to bolster their team with young talent.
The DailyFaceoff reported last month that the NHL and NHLPA have salary cap estimates showing that the cap will rise by $7.5 million for the 2025-26 season. With this in mind, expect to see GM’s offer sheet some young budding stars, with Knies at the forefront of that group.
In terms of what number we should expect teams to offer Knies, the bar would be set somewhere between six and eight million dollars in AAV. The reasoning for these numbers is that I see a lot of similarities between Knies and LA’s Quinton Byfield, two potentially premier power-forwards, both 22 years old with similar play styles. Each made a name for themselves playing on their team’s respective top lines, as Byfield flourished last season when playing the wing beside Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe.
Obviously, the Leafs may want to go with a longer term here to get the cap hit down, because Knies, while loaded with potential, still hasn't really accomplished anything in his career, and his numbers, while decent, are not great. There is also the fact to consider that he's playing with two of the best players alive and might not be this good otherwise.
The Leafs must keep all of this in mind so that they can come up with a fair contract that won't hurt them, while avoiding being offersheeted by teams like San Jose who will have a ton of cap space next year.