Maple Leafs, Anthony Stolarz holding extension talks

The Leafs have opened extension discussions with goaltender Anthony Stolarz, general manager Brad Treliving tells Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. He divulged that those talks have been ongoing “for some time” and that they’ve explored multiple options, presumably those with varying term.

Stolarz is a slam-dunk extension target, even with the younger and highly competent Joseph Woll as the other half of Toronto’s tandem. The 31-year-old has been one of the better backups in the league for some time before landing with the Leafs in free agency last year, finishing fifth in Vezina Trophy voting after posting a league-high .926 SV% in a career-high 33 starts and one relief appearance.

That strong play yielded a 21-8-3 record along with a 2.14 GAA and four shutouts. He was incredibly consistent over the course of the season, and by the numbers, no one in the league was more effective on a per-game basis. Among goalies with at least 15 appearances, no goalie saved more goals above expected per 60 minutes than Stolarz’s 0.779 mark, per MoneyPuck. That figure is a whole 0.144 clear of Vezina winner Connor Hellebuyck’s.

Still, that elite level of play combined with his outright lack of track record as a starter or even 1A option makes him something of a unicorn. Stolarz had never even started 25 games in a season entering last year, although his career numbers (.917 SV%, 2.55 GAA, 64-39-12 record in 142 GP) remain well above average since he made his NHL debut with the Flyers back in 2016.

His lack of ice time has been influenced by a variety of reasons, but none more pertinent than his injury history. He would have started the majority of his team’s games for the first time last year if not for midseason knee surgery – his second in the last three years – that kept him out for nearly two months. He began the postseason as Toronto’s starter and guided them to a six-game dispatching of the Senators in the first round, but sustained a concussion in Game 1 of their second-round loss against the Panthers, ending his season.

Yet that also paints a picture of Stolarz being an incredibly resilient goaltender, reaching his peak and establishing himself as an elite tandem option 13 years after Philadelphia took him in the second round of the 2012 draft. The 6’6″, 234-lb netminder has now posted a save percentage north of .920 in four of his last six NHL seasons, and his .926 combined SV% over the last two seasons leads everyone with at least 25 starts.

Treliving already made something of an insurance policy for himself by signing Woll to a three-year, $11MM extension as soon as he became eligible to ink one last year. That contract is only going into effect now, meaning Woll, who has a 39-25-2 record and .908 SV% over his first two seasons as a full-time NHL option, is locked in at a $3.67MM cap hit through 2027-28. It would make sense that Toronto opines for a three-year extension for Stolarz, keeping his injury history in mind, but staggering the expiry of his and Woll’s contracts.

His open-market value is hard to predict. Even after excelling in a backup role with the Panthers in 2023-24, he only landed a two-year deal with a $2.5MM cap hit with Toronto in free agency. AFP Analytics projects a two-year extension for Stolarz at just north of $4.25MM per season – that’s with the projected cap jump to $104MM – and the AAV likely wouldn’t differ much with an additional year of term.

That would still make Stolarz and Woll, the latter of whom is just entering his prime, one of the most cost-effective tandems in the league, especially when considering the market set by extensions for names like Logan Thompson ($5.85MM AAV) and Adin Hill ($6.25MM AAV) last season. Without a slam-dunk prospect in the system behind Woll and next summer’s premier UFA options (Sergei Bobrovsky, Filip Gustavsson, Jacob Markström) likely out of their price range, hedging their bets on Stolarz and Woll continuing to split the crease in a more cost-effective manner is likely their best path forward.