The Toronto Maple Leafs were defeated by the Boston Bruins in seven games in the first round of the playoffs after a 46 win and 100 point season. After an early playoff exit, the Leafs are in a very difficult spot cap wise and still need to upgrade their roster. As of release, the Leafs have $8.7 Million in cap space and has four pending restricted free agents and a multitude of free agents to sign.
Toronto won the 2018 off-season by signing star John Tavaras to a seven year $77 million dollar deal while maintaining their young core. With most of their young core on the final year of their entry level contracts, it put Toronto in a spot where they had to go deep in 2019. Now they enter the 2019/2020 season in one of the worst cases of “cap hell” to date.
The big question for Toronto is how they sign their leading scorer last year in Mitch Marner alongside the rest of their players. Marner is expected to take a very big contract while Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson are RFA’s. Both players hit the 20-goal and 40-point mark this year and will be also looking to get paid. Defensemen Jake Gardiner and Ron Hainsey are both pending unrestricted free agents on July 1st.
Defensive woes
The Maple Leafs’ defense was not their strong point in the 2018-2019 NHL season. They were 16th in the league in goals against average in the regular season and 8th in the playoffs. They allowed the 8th most shots on net in the league while having the 16th best penalty kill. Statistically, the Leafs defense is one of their weaker aspects and had issues maintaining an average defense going into the playoffs.
Toronto special teams during the playoffs proved to be very special, after only being able to kill 56% of their penalties despite logging 11 more power play minutes than the Boston Bruins. Despite the atrocious PK, they racked up a goals against average of 2.71 which was the second best out of teams eliminated from the first round. It was slightly better than their regular season average of 2.81 goals against but it was thanks in large part to Frederik Andersen stealing a few games.
Outside of Toronto’s cap problems, they still need to improve their defense. It has been proven that their blue line is not good nor is it deep enough for the Leafs to realistically make a playoff run in its current state. Almost half of Toronto’s active defensemen are most likely not going to return for the 2019/2020 season.
Both Jake Gardiner and Ron Hainsey are both unrestricted free agents and are likely not going to return; With Hainsey being 38 years old on a team that wants to get younger and Gardiner literally being booed off the ice by his own fans and will probably not take a big pay cut to stay in Toronto; 28-year old top four defensemen are in high demand and will be listening to deals. Plus it would be next to impossible for the Leafs to give him the same money as other franchises.
To add insult to injury, Nikita Zaitsev recently requested a trade and the request was made public by General Manager Kyle Dubas. It is very rare for the GM himself to come out and publicly announce a trade request. The transparency of the situation makes it almost a “sure thing” that the defensemen is not going to be a Leaf for long. The only two players who are set in stone for next season are Morgan Rielly and Jake Muzzin. Travis Dermott has a good chance at staying for the short term, but he is a RFA in 2020. The rest of the blue line could end up almost anywhere.
There is a saving grace in Toronto… Â They have some very good looking prospects in the pipeline. Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin are two defensemen who played phenomenally for the Toronto Marlies last year and are both looking for a shot at the big leagues next season. If both prospects pan out to be top four defensemen, the Leafs could be in salvageable position to build up their team if they are still able to resign a good amount of their players. Both Liljegren and Sandin have three years left in their entry level contracts.
High Flying Offense
While the blue line situation looks dire, the Leafs feature one of the deadliest top six in the NHL. Last season, they were tied for third in goals per game and had the fourth best goals for vs goals against ratio. The Leafs are an elite NHL offense without any question and still have a young core that is looking to improve.
Sometimes it is easy to forget how good the Leafs core was last season. The 22-year old Marner scored 26 goals and 94 points while John Tavaras is only 28 and put up 47 goals and 88 points himself. Auston Matthews finally signed his big five year 58 million dollar contract at the age of 21 (turns 22 in September) while putting up an impressive 73 points in 68 games. Meanwhile players like Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson and Zach Hyman all hit the 20-goal mark.
There is still talk about changing up the offense, there are rumors swirling around players like Patrick Marleau and Nazem Kadri being moved in order to clear up some more cap space. Most talk is suggesting that any move would most likely involve moving a pick or a prospect as well to make any kind of deal work. Marleau seems to be ready to move as he put his house up for sale amidst all the trade rumors. Whereas Nazem Kadri had his fair share of trade rumors involving him but nothing as concrete as some of his teammates.
Cap Hell
The name of the game is to sign the young core. But it seems that players who are on a similar caliber of players like Mitch Marner are taking huge amounts of money. Despite Marner scoring more points than his counterparts who are earning more than $11 million dollars, he will need to take a massive pay cut in any situation where he remains a Leaf in October.
Evolving Wild of the Hockey Graphs twitter account tweeted out their contract predictions using all possible comparables and predicted that his value is most likely around the ballpark of $9.8 million a season.
Assuming the game to sign everyone pans out and Marner signs, two young components are also restricted free agents. The aforementioned Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson are big pieces in the puzzle and look like they have a higher ceiling.
Using the same spreadsheet that displays their value based on similar contracts/situations, Kapanen is most likely worth 2.2 million a season and Johnsson is worth 3.7 million. The most probably scenario is a bridge deal for at least one of these players but there won’t be much talk until a deal is done with Mitch Marner.
Cap hell is a bad place to be and the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to be losing at least one key piece to their regular season success last year.
The 2019 NHL Entry Draft
The Leafs do not have their first round pick in the draft, so their first selection is set to be at 53rd overall. They can be fairly flexible as they pretty much need anyone who can play at the NHL level regardless of position. With how badly their defense is most likely going to look, their best option is to look for a defensive gem in the draft. However, almost all defensemen outside of the top 10 need at least a few years in development and Toronto is in win now mode.
They could trade their second or third round pick in the draft if it were to clear space, but that could backfire in the long run. Most of their needs are uncertain until they start signing some of their RFA’s. If there is no signings by June 21st, expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to draft the best defenseman available.
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