Leivo’s sweet deal hints at master plan
On its own, the Josh Leivo signing by the Maple Leafs last week was hardly earth-shattering news or something likely to be a pivotal transaction this season.
But it was intriguing nonetheless, a glimpse into the dynamics of the team’s salary and personnel management strategy, which could be as interesting to watch in the coming years as the team’s on-ice performance.
That’s the NHL, of course, in 2017. There’s the games on the ice, and the fascinating salary-cap games off the ice.
The Leafs have received a lot of undesired attention for the manner in which they’ve handled high-salaried veterans they no longer want (hello, Joffrey Lupul), but less attention for what they’re trying to create with the organization in general.
Leivo gave us some insight into that. On the surface, it seemed a bit unusual that a player who, to some degree, seems trapped within the organization would choose to extend his contract to the end of next season rather than become an unrestricted free agent in July.
Why would he do that? He’s not dressing much. Wouldn’t he want out?
Tough call for the young man, for sure, and it helped that he had an experienced adviser in agent Ian Pulver, who has seen the NHL business develop from a number of perspectives over the past 20 years. Leivo concluded that it was better for him to stay in Toronto and fight for work rather than take a chance in free agency that he might find a better home.
“He’s from the Toronto area, he wants to make it here and be part of what they’re doing,” said Pulver. “He’s prepared to wait his turn to perform on a regular basis. If he gets a repeated chance to do that, he believes he can have success here.”
In other words, Leivo decided the grass wouldn’t necessarily be greener somewhere else, that the Leafs are now an organization worth being part of and that an opportunity for a bigger payday would be enhanced if he took this deal now.
Needless to say, this is exactly the situation Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello and Co. are hoping to create.
Remember, the Leafs are heavily influenced by people who were once in the New Jersey (Lamoriello) or Detroit organization (Mike Babcock, Jim Hiller). Shanahan, meanwhile, was part of both. Both the Red Wings and Devils during their heydays were exceptionally good at accumulating talent, keeping that talent as long as possible and creating the conditions under which, in some cases, talent was convinced to stay and play for below-market salaries.
The Devils knew as long as they had Martin Brodeur content at a certain salary, it was nearly impossible for any other player to ask for more. Plus, players liked winning Cups and living in suburban New Jersey.
Detroit, meanwhile, was very good at keeping players in their farm system for as long as possible, both as an apprenticeship technique and to make it difficult for those players to demand higher salaries early in their careers. While other teams were rushing kids to the NHL, the Wings would take a more gradual approach, understanding it was also a way to control costs. How can you ask for the moon on your second contract, after all, when you’ve played most of your entrylevel years in Grand Rapids?
Teams require long-term stability in management to consistently pursue these kinds of strategies. Detroit and Jersey both had that, and the Leafs appear to now.
The overall goal is to be better able to afford the expensive, irreplaceable players by making sure there’s lots of choice and competition among the more affordable, replaceable athletes.
The only current Leaf guaranteed to get paid to the max is Auston Matthews. Forget the big hometown discount there. The Leafs need to then manage their cap intelligently to afford William Nylander and Mitch Marner, with the dollar amounts depending on how those players progress.
After that, it’s a matter of having lots of competition for jobs and available cap space. Ideally, the organization will progress to the point where some of those players will be willing to take less to be a Leaf. Tampa surely felt it got that kind of a bargain at the upper end of the payroll with Steven Stamkos last summer, and that could really pay off down the line.
In Toronto, Morgan Rielly, Nazem Kadri, Connor Brown and Zach Hyman have signed what could be considered team-friendly deals in the past two years. Freddie Anderson is the 18th-highest-paid goalie in the league. Meanwhile, with more than $16 million coming off the books next summer, you’ll have James van Riemsdyk, Leo Komarov and Tyler Bozak all looking for new contracts, probably with the choice of trying to get more as UFAs or settling for less to stay in Toronto.
Beyond that, you’ve got Leivo, Kasperi Kapanen and Nikita Soshnikov all fighting to get into the current Leaf lineup, with Curtis McElhinney, Garret Sparks and Calvin Pickard each with an eye on the understudy role to Andersen next year. In training camp, you had Eric Fehr and Dominic Moore fighting it out for one fourth-line centre position.
On the farm, there are nine defencemen with the second-place Marlies, at least half of whom are legitimate NHL prospects, including 2017 No. 1 pick Timothy Liljegren.
The Leafs have made 27 selections in last three drafts after making only 17 in the three before that, putting more bodies into the organizational churn. They’ve now picked in the first round seven years in a row (from 2003 to 2007 they had no first-rounder three times) and have basically all of their picks for the next three years in place.
More bodies. More competition. More assets to trade if needed.
Although they failed to attract either Stamkos or Jimmy Vesey two summers ago, the Leafs appear to be creating a dynamic in which players want to play in the GTA, and for salaries less than what they theoretically could command elsewhere. The old myth that players from the Toronto area didn’t want to play for the Leafs has been proven to be just that, a myth.
Leivo was one example of all these elements of the Leafs’ grand strategy. We’ll see if he can find a way to become a regular.
All of this only works, of course, if the right players are drafted and acquired, and the right players are identified as worth keeping, and if those players perform. So far, 31⁄ years into the Shana
2 plan, the signs are certainly encouraging. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.