Maple Leafs: Plenty of questions left to be answered during the off-season
The Maple Leafs aren’t yet a week into their off-season and the winds of change are howling all around them.
The loss in the play-in series to Columbus, a team most observers felt the Leafs should have beaten, followed three straight years of first-round exits. The latest setback is weighing heavily on players and management, who have admitted the team took a step back this year in its overall performance.
So there are questions, with the sting of missing the final 16 not likely to ease any time soon:
> What is the Leafs’ cap situation?
The Leafs finished the season topped out in cap space at $95.1 million (U.S.), according to capfriendly.com. They had $13.6 million on long-term injury reserve, allowing them to get under the NHL’s $81.5-million ceiling.
The club will pay $40.4 million to the big four (Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares) next season but should have at least $10 million freed up with the expected departures of unrestricted free agents Tyson Barrie and Cody Ceci.
Decisions will have to made on UFAs Kyle Clifford and Jason Spezza, and restricted free agents Ilya Mikheyev, Travis Dermott, Denis Malgin, and Frederik Gauthier. It’s likely all the RFAs are retained.
But cap space is needed. GM Kyle Dubas will at least explore the trade market to upgrade his blue line, and there are extensions to consider for winger Zach Hyman and goaltender Frederik Andersen, whose contracts expire next summer.
> Will they extend Andersen?
This is probably the most interesting Leafs’ talking point this off-season. Andersen’s five-year, $25-million deal ends after next season and he has faced his share of criticism over the past two years? He has yet to win a playoff series with the Leafs, though that can be said of the team’s other core players.
Should he remain part of the core? He’s 30 years old and could be part of a large group of UFA goalies in 2021. But if Dubas can engineer a creative extension, and he’s good at that, Andersen should be able to help get this team over that firstround hump. The other options — acquiring a free agent or going with backup Jack Campbell and another in-house candidate — aren’t exactly shiny upgrades over Andersen. Still, a tough call.
> Will the Leafs break up the big four?
There has been plenty of talk about that, namely shedding Nylander. Like Andersen, they’re all fair game. Dubas has the four forwards signed through at least 2023-24, which appears to be their window to bring a Stanley Cup to Toronto. They’ve had precious little time as a group to begin achieving that, and it’s hard to see Dubas breaking them up. If he does, it will be seen as an admission that there was a hole in the original plan.
> Can this team add some toughness to its game?
That has been a rallying cry among the fan base. Dubas did upgrade the team’s grit element by dealing for Jake Muzzin and Clifford the past couple of years, and Spezza and Kasperi Kapanen have been surprisingly spirited at times. Here’s a thought: Why not ask the current roster to get mad? Toronto plays with speed and talent and emotion, but few players get truly mad when an opposition forward runs into Andersen. They did show up for Andersen in Game 2 of the Blue Jackets series, and they had their best game of the playoffs.