Leafs’ division rivals make a valuable Point
Bruins, Bolts didn’t pay out nearly as much for young stars, giving them cap flexibility
The numbers don’t add up. At least, not if you are the Toronto Maple Leafs.
How else to explain what’s going on with restricted free agents these days? While the Leafs were forced into paying above sticker price for Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, every other young player in the league seems to be giving their team a discount.
It’s like buying a ticket to a hockey game, only to realize the person sitting next to you got theirs for a quarter of the price.
Days after Mitch Marner agreed to a US$10.893-million cap hit, Boston defenceman Charlie McAvoy signed for just $4.9 million per year. A week later, Tampa Bay got centre Brayden Point under contract for $6.75 million annually.
What’s next? Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk and Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine signing for the league minimum?
For the Leafs, it’s difficult not to see how this will affect the team. The regular season hasn’t even begun, but Toronto is already trailing Tampa Bay and Boston. Maybe not in the actual standings, but in a category almost as important: available cap space.
That’s the big take-away for the Leafs, as life in the Atlantic Division has become much, much more difficult.
Cheers might have filled the city when Marner signed a sixyear extension on the first official day of training camp. But they were short-lived, as McAvoy and Point signed short-term deals that not only gave their respective teams a major discount, but also control over their next contracts.
Marner, like Matthews and Nylander, will be an unrestricted free agent when his contract expires and could walk out the door. McAvoy and Point won’t have that same freedom.
But this is all about the money in an era where cap space is king. And the Leafs have none, while the others are flush with flexibility.
Forget about Marner or Matthews. The Point contract, which was partly made possible because of Florida’s lack of a state income tax, is $200,000 less than what the Leafs are paying Nylander. And that’s for a 23-year-old who tied for sixth in goals (41) and 12th in points (92) last season. It only gets worse for Toronto. Say what you will about the skill level of John Tavares, Matthews and Marner, but their production doesn’t come cheap. Combined, they scored 110 goals and 255 points. But it cost the team $33.5 million.
Compare that to Tampa Bay, where Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos and Point combined for 127 goals and 318 points and cost the Lightning only $24.75 million. That’s $8.7 million less than the Leafs have sunk into Tavares, Matthews and Marner. To put it into terms that mean something, those savings could buy you Victor Hedman.
Boston, meanwhile, received 106 goals and 260 points from Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak at a cost of $20.791 million, or $12.7 million less than Toronto’s top three. That’s enough to buy two top-pairing defencemen.
Then there’s the Florida Panthers, where Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Mike Hoffman combined for 101 goals and 258 points at a bargain-basement price of $16.5 million less than Toronto is paying its top three. With that kind of money, Toronto could have another forward line at its disposal.
You don’t need to be a capologist to see how this is going to make winning a Stanley Cup — much less advancing out of the first round — more difficult for the Maple Leafs.
If they don’t have the same cap flexibility as the Lightning, Bruins and Panthers, then they don’t have the same depth. And if they don’t have the same depth, then it’s up to Tavares, Matthews and Marner to carry the load in the same way the Lightning or Bruins or Panthers don’t need their top guns to do.
The reason the Leafs lost to the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs wasn’t because their top three forwards weren’t as good as Boston’s. It was because Boston’s secondary scorers (Marcus Johansson and Charlie Coyle) and depth defencemen (Brandon Carlo and Torey Krug) were better than Toronto’s.
It’s a reminder to the Winnipeg Jets and Colorado Avalanche, who are still at an impasse with their restricted agents. The more money you pay them, the less money you have to go around to supplement the rest of the roster.
It’s an easy concept, but it’s a difficult one to grasp in a city that often values its own players more than other markets might.
Blame blue-and-white disease, that ailment that had fans complaining about trading Wendel Clark for Mats Sundin back in the day, for pressuring the Leafs into paying Marner more money than Kucherov is receiving. You don’t get that in Tampa Bay, which traded away Jonathan Drouin after similar contract demands. And you certainly don’t get it in Boston, where no one is earning more than
$7.25 million.
Toronto has three of them. And based on how little other teams are paying their star talent, they better be worth every single penny.