Bleeding blue … for $58M
Matthews to become highest-paid Leaf with a team-friendly, five-year extension
Auston Matthews was wearing a blue suit, a blue-and-white checked collared shirt, and he looked like a million bucks. Or $58.17 million. And the Toronto Maple Leafs star centre, fresh off signing a five-year extension, will be worth every penny if he helps deliver on his promise.
“In the end, you’re measured on championships,” said Matthews, standing in the Leafs’ dressing room at the Scotiabank Arena. “What I want to do here is help this team and be productive in any way I can to win a championship. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Indeed, the Stanley Cup is what it’s all about now. Matthews, an elite talent, signed for a team-friendly deal that averages $11.634 million — note his number at the end of the dollar figure.
The 21-year-old will be the highest paid Maple Leaf next season, surpassing John Tavares’ annual average salary of $11 million.
The five-year deal means he can be an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2024. He’ll just be 26, hitting his prime. But it also should leave plenty of cap space — about $18 million — to sign Mitch Marner and some other key youngsters like Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson.
“You know, a lot of guys have done five years before,” Matthews said. “We understand the cap restraints we have, the league, and every single team has, so we went through everything from three to eight, and kind of settled on five, so I think both sides are obviously happy and happy to get this over with. For myself, I’m proud and, for my family, I’m extremely excited.”
Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas was just as happy.
“We made the investment in Auston because he’s shown tremendous potential,” Dubas said. “He’s a centre and he scores at an elite rate few have matched in his first three years of hockey. We know what he’s capable of and he’s still a very young man. He has a lot of potential that we have to help him reach.”
Matthews initially wanted an eightyear term, which would have cost the Maple Leafs a pretty sum, possibly as much as $13 million to $14 million a year, since he would have been sacrificing a few years of free agency.
It would have squeezed the cap so tightly that some good players might have had to be moved to create cap space. Dubas said Matthews showed his commitment to the team by offering a shorter term.
“We’re very thankful that they were willing to move from their desired term,
and obviously everyone wants to be here for as long as possible, so we were able to find an AAV (average annual value) that works for everybody,” Dubas said. “And we were able to lock him in, and also to maintain some flexibility as we move ahead.”
Dubas has plenty of work remaining. The Leafs can handle a contract valued at up to $2 million for the remainder of the season if another player is to be acquired at the Feb. 25 trade deadline. And Dubas can also turn his attention to the remaining restricted free agents. Marner is the biggest name among them, with his camp seemingly preferring to wait until the end of the season to get talks going.
Matthews, meanwhile, can concentrate on hockey.
“It’s nice to get it over with,” he said. “I don’t think it was a weight on my shoulders. It was just something that was there, something (the media liked) to talk about every few weeks or so. It was not really something that bothered me too much.
“I knew whether it was now or after the season or the previous summer, I knew it was going to get done regardless.”
Barring negotiations that follow with other players, Matthews will be the secondhighest paid player in the league next year, behind Connor McDavid ($12.5 million AAV).
“Making one dollar or 11 million dollars, I’m not going to change who I am,” Matthews said. “I’m going to be myself everyday. To me, nothing really changes. I get to play hockey, do what I love. I get to do it for a lot of money, like I have been for the past couple of years. I feel very fortunate, and very lucky, especially to do it in a city like Toronto. It’s something I never really imagined as a kid. It’s very special. I feel extremely honoured.
“I don’t think anybody on the team takes for granted playing in a special market like this, so we all want to accomplish our ultimate goal, to win the Stanley Cup and make the city proud, and we’re working hard towards that every day.”