Read all about the Sens-Leafs mega-deal on pages
So, the Toronto Maple Leafs have traded 30-year-old defenceman Dion Phaneuf to the Ottawa Senators.
The Maple Leafs were probably quite happy to pay him his exorbitant salary for another year or two while he soaked up a lot of minutes on a rebuilding team.
But what they absolutely did not want to do was keep paying Phaneuf that money, $7 million US annually on the cap hit, for another five seasons after this one, not when that would bleed into the years during which this bad team actually plans to be good. They didn’t want to pay Phaneuf one bit of that salary in those future years, in fact, which is why general manager Lou Lamoriello said it was “extremely important” that the Senators retained his full ticket. It’s a trade that makes no sense for the Maple Leafs, aside from the inclusion of a good prospect in Tobias Lindberg, but for the fact that it unloads the Phaneuf contract.
Who trades their captain to a division rival? A team that knows the captain is grossly overpaid. (It also helps that no one currently in management was around when said contract was signed.)
To put that contract in perspective, consider that Drew Doughty of the Los Angeles Kings, one of the best defencemen in the game, who is four years younger than Phaneuf, also carries a $7-million-plus annual cap hit for the three seasons after this one. (Phaneuf’s contract is, yes, two years longer.) The former Toronto captain is, to put it charitably, not the same type of player. He’s not a top-pairing defenceman, and better suited to a second pairing — although you could still get some argument there — which means his salary is completely out of whack with his worth.
This is less of a concern for the Senators, who are not close to spending to the salary cap and don’t intend to be, but a significant one for the Maple Leafs, who pay their coach like he is the dictator of a small island nation and who wants to ensure that they have cap room to pay their own young prospects when the team is rounding into form. Or to pay a big-dollar free agent in the short term. In a salary-cap world, the worst thing you can do is overpay for mediocrity, because it limits the amount you have left to pay excellence, so the Leafs just unloaded $35 million.
Will they throw that money at Tampa’s Steve Stamkos in July? Will they make more moves between now and season’s end to shed more talent and stay at or near the bottom of the overall standings in the process? Maybe, and almost definitely. Lamoriello, cagey as ever, said he thinks of the Leafs as “on a five-year plan that changes every single day.”
President Brendan Shanahan’s decision to move on from the hapless former regime was an easy one, and the hiring of well-regarded executives Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter into personnel roles suggested he had a smart long game in mind. The Lamoriello hiring looked like it might have been a wobble — his best days in New Jersey are a long time ago, and before the salary-cap era — but in his first major move he has shown that he is wholly on board with getting good by first getting bad. Babcock and the coaching staff also helped the front office by sheltering Phaneuf this season, keeping him away from opponents’ top lines and reducing his time on the penalty kill. He went from being the subject of nightly complaints and boos — and the focus of SaluteGate, the brief anti-fan insurrection last season — to playing competent hockey against lesser competition. Suddenly he had value again. Are you interested in buying this used car? Yes, that is a new coat of paint. No, it has never been in an accident. Honest.
The other parts of the trade — defenceman Jared Cowen, forwards Milan Michalek, Colin Greening and Ottawa’s secondround pick in the 2017 NHL entry draft — all seem like secondary elements beyond the fact that the Senators would pay Phaneuf and the Maple Leafs would not.
The Senators also get minorleague forwards Matt Frattin, Casey Bailey and Ryan Rupert plus defence prospect Cody Donaghey.
On his conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Lamoriello, after praising Phaneuf as much as could for being a good leader and an all-around solid fellow, admitted that when the option came to get out from under the captain’s contract, he had “no choice” but to make the transaction.
He had said earlier that it was always hard to trade a core player like Phaneuf, but that deals like that “are going to be made for the reasons that they are made.”
He didn’t explain what those reasons were, nor did he need to.