Is it time for Gardiner to go?
Pending free agent will be tough to keep
Maybe it’s time for the Maple Leafs to trade Jake Gardiner.
And if Kasperi Kapanen has to go as well as the Leafs deal with a tighter salary cap, then it’s up to general manager Kyle Dubas to make it all fit for a playoff run now while looking to keep the core together for playoff runs to come.
But such talk may fly in the face of logic given Gardiner is an important part of the Maple Leafs, a team that finally can say it has Stanley Cup aspirations and is respected around the league.
But the defenceman’s future with the team is tenuous. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent July 1, able to command a salary in the $6-million to $7-million range, a price tag that would appear too high for the Leafs.
Because by the time Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews get news deals, most of the team’s pending $26 million in salary cap money will be gone, and there will be others to sign.
Logic would suggest keeping Gardiner — an ‘Own Rental’ is the term in the NHL these days — to keep the team intact and see how it fares in the playoffs.
The Leafs did a similar thing last season with James van Riemsdyk, Tyler Bozak and Leo Komarov.
They didn’t make it out of the first round, and all three left as unrestricted free agents in the summer, signing lu- crative deals elsewhere.
Now consider what the most valuable of those players — van Riemsdyk, the scorer — might have fetched at the trade deadline last year. San Jose gave up a first-rounder, a fourth-rounder and a prospect for Evander Kane, who was a pending UFA, like van Riemsdyk.
Ditto Paul Stastny, worth a first-round pick and other considerations to the Winnipeg Jets to acquire him from the St. Louis Blues.
The Leafs appear headed for another No. 2 vs. No. 3 showdown with the Boston Bruins in the Atlantic Division playoffs. If Toronto turns the tables on a team that has owned them recently, next up would be the No. 1 Tampa Bay Lightning.
So what are the Leafs’ chances of getting through to the Conference final? As they say, anything can happen.
But if anything can happen with Gardiner, then anything can happen without him too.
In the long term, moving Gardiner would seem to be a positive. Presuming the Leafs get a first-round pick, that player will almost certainly be a contributor in a year or two. And for the first three seasons he’d be a cheap addition on an entry-level deal, something the Leafs will be starving for. Combined with their own first-round pick, the Leafs would be well-positioned to provide support players for Matthews and Marner.
In the short-term, the here and now, moving Gardiner wouldn’t make much of a difference. Travis Dermott seems ready for more, and he’s going to get a bigger role next season anyway, so why not start now? Either Dermott or Nikita Zaitsev can take over the second power-play unit. If Martin Marincin and/or Justin Holl start getting minutes, or if Calle Rosen gets that long-awaited call up, the Leafs will probably not have surrendered much in the present to secure a more solid future. And whatever might be lost defensively by trading Gardiner could be tempered by a Kapanen deal, because moving Gardiner would not preclude the Leafs from shoring up the right side of their defence, their biggest deficiency. To get a good right-side player will cost them a young stud. Du- bas has already promised William Nylander he won’t be traded, so it’s doubtful he’d go back on his word. At least not this quickly. Kapanen is probably the most tradable, and his appearance on the team’s first power-play unit only adds to his resume. Kapanen appears destined for a third-line role, behind Marner and Nylander, making somewhere around $2.5 million a season. Another team might see Kapanen as more valuable than that, perhaps even at the $4million level The compensa tion the Leafs would get on a $4-million offer sheet to Kapanen — also a restricted free agent July 1 — would only be a second-round pick, something Dubas would have to be aware of. If the GM is open to trading Kapanen before July 1, why not trade him now if Kapanen could net the Leafs a differencemaker on the blue line, one that can offer more on the top pairing with Morgan Rielly than Ron Hainsey does? The Carolina Hurricanes could be a potential trade partner, as they boast a slew of righthanded defencemen. Brett Pesce’s name keeps coming up; his cap hit is $4.025 million a season until 2024 and he’s just 24 Would the Edmonton Oilers bite? Kapanen’s speed and scoring ability would shine on Connor McDavid’s wing. And his ability to kill penalties and be a force in his own zone would be a match for coach Ken Hitchcock’s system. Could Kapanen for Adam Larsson ($4.167 million until 2021) be a potential deal? Larsson is 26.
And there are bigger fish to be caught: There’s Alex Pietrangelo of the Blues, currently out with an injury to his right hand. Though it’s hard to see how his $6.5-million hit next season would be a fit for the Leafs. But the 28-year-old would be a difference maker in the shortterm. His price tag would be higher than Kapanen, maybe Timothy Liljegren or Rasmus Sandin as well.
No matter what Dubas chooses to do, there’s risk.
The safe route is to stay the course, maybe add a rental. But Dubas doesn’t want to be like previous GMs, and more likely will break with the tradition of how things had been done.