Little salary cap growth is expected
The lowest cap hit among that group is Hedman’s $7.7875 million, which came with the customary Tampa discount and accounted for 10.79 per cent of the cap when it was signed in 2016 — equating to roughly $8.8 million in today’s NHL dollars.
How Dubas navigates the organization’s most pressing decision bears watching.
The GM is summoning a “Last Dance” kind of vibe for the coming season, openly acknowledging that changes are inevitable if the Leafs don’t progress following five straight early playoff exits.
It could be that he wants to see how the team starts before engaging with Rielly’s camp. Or perhaps he’ll approach the situation similar to how he did with Zach Hyman and Frederik Andersen last season — treating those long-term Leafs as “own rentals” while walking them straight to free agency.
As valued as those players were, though, they weren’t Rielly.
There isn’t an obvious succession plan for how his minutes would be absorbed if the Leafs moved on from the 27year-old next summer, beyond
perhaps thrusting more responsibility on Rasmus Sandin and Travis Dermott. And there’s a deeper attachment to consider with the fifth overall pick from 2012 who has worn an alternate captain’s A for several seasons and been a prominent figure in the community.
Even with the Leafs navigating a tight cap situation, there would be nothing to prevent Dubas from signing Rielly to a big extension now and putting off any corollary decisions until next summer since the new contract wouldn’t kick in until 2022-23 — buying time essentially to determine how to make room for his increased cap hit.
However, speaking generally this past week on the “Bob McCown Podcast,” Dubas noted that a number of contending teams have started letting players walk in free agency because of a salary cap not expected to grow much beyond $81.5 million for the next few years.
“I think you’re going to see more and more of that because you can’t just extend the players and hope that you’re going to figure out the cap stuff later. The cap isn’t going to go anywhere so you’re going to, I think, see a lot more guys playing out their UFA seasons,” Dubas said.
The Leafs certainly stand to derive significant value from the final year of Rielly’s $5million annual contract in the months ahead. They’d no doubt love to see his next deal come somewhere close to the $6.5 million Colton Parayko and Torey Krug signed for in St. Louis, but that appears below market.
Rielly has invested more than any other current Leaf in turning this organization around and was one of the standout performers in May’s sevengame loss to Montreal, acknowledging afterwards that he’d started to think about his contract situation.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.
Training camp is now 10 days away and they haven’t yet reached the bridge. You wonder if they’ll ever really get there.