Jim Nill has been setting the price for Maple Leafs free agents

You wouldn’t think of the Dallas Stars as an impactful team when it comes to the future of the Toronto Maple Leafs but here we are. Aside from the Mikko Rantanen acquisition being a “what if” that will be explored both as a potential for Leafs trade target as well as a “what if the Leafs traded Mitch Marner?” data point, the two contract extensions signed by Jim Nill and the Dallas Stars will have a big impact on what comes next for the Leafs and a couple of their free agents.

The Mikko Rantanen, $12M AAV over 8 years is absolutely a benchmark for Mitch Marner. Given that Rantanen has outperformed Marner over the respective careers and has a cup ring seems like the contract should be a ceiling for Marner, but the reality is probably sets the floor.

Marner is now THE guy when it comes to the open market if he decides to pursue it this summer. By all accounts, the Leafs winger is at least interested in seeing what can be done there and while he’d be limited to seven years instead of eight, it remains to be seen on if Marner believes the open market can alleviate that difference. Rantanen’s $12M x 8 nets him $96M. Marner would need to find a team willing to pay him $13.714M AAV over seven years to match Rantanen’s deal. He can probably find that in what could be a ridiculous cap environment.

The two firsts and Logan Stankoven return or potentially flipping Marner for Rantanen will loom big, but remembering that Marner’s no movement clause negated any possibility of that happening, the real “should have traded Marner” hindsight point remains the summer of 2023.

The Marner situation hasn’t changed a whole lot, he’s doing what he says he intends to do and the Maple Leafs are still going to set their max price based on how the playoffs go.

The optimist will say that the Rantanen comparable helps and the rest of the league might pause on going far above that, putting Toronto in a better position.

The pessimist will say Rantanen not being available makes this the summer of Marner and if Mitch wants to be on a contender, the price is around Rantanen, but if Marner wants to chase the payday, why wouldn’t the Blackhawks pay Marner over $14M to set up Connor Bedard for almost a decade?

No matter how you slice it, the Stars had an impact here.

Another place where the Stars had an impact was with the Wyatt Johnson contract. Matthew Knies is not Wyatt Johnson (yet) and that means the $8.4M AAV that Johnson just received likely means it is out of the reach of Matthew Knies, creating a potentially cheaper deal for Brad Treliving than some have previously speculated.

The Knies’ contract will still be expensive, but sub-$8M is again feeling like a possibility and for Knies as a restricted free agent without arbitration rights, it would be a hard case to make to pay him above player like Johnson, even if you want to debate the impact of state/provincial income tax rates, which for the record, most agents seem to assert mattering more than publicly perceived.

The best play from the Knies camp might be to go for a shorter term bridge deal and cashing in on the rising cap and arbitration rights, but with a career year and a likely 30-goal number next to his name, committing to the best possible number isn’t easy to pass up on.

The Stars have set the bar and having a highly regarded GM like Jim Nill not only show the value of getting out ahead of things but also establishing reasonable comparables benefits the Leafs and other teams in similar situations.