Maple Leafs land 25th in Daily Faceoff’s salary cap rankings

With training camps soon set to kick off, Daily Faceoff’s Scott Maxwell is taking the chance to evaluate salary cap management across the league, ranking all NHL teams by how efficiently they are spending (see his methodology here). On Wednesday, he released the bottom quarter of the list, with #25-32 in the ranking to kick things off. Included at number 25 are the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Maxwell argues that he long saw the Leafs as generally doing well with their salary cap management, but that it all changed once Kyle Dubas was fired and the keys were handed to Brad Treliving. Since then things have gone downhill, he says:

The biggest issue for the Leafs has been one that’s plagued them for years: they struggle to get players at contracts that are well below their market value. This season, that list is limited to just Matias Maccelli, Jake McCabe, Bobby McMann, Anthony Stolarz and John Tavares, and only McCabe and Tavares are signed beyond this season. They still have more deals that are around market value than below it, but when they don’t have a high end to balance it out, it hurts their contract rating. That said, the list of bad contracts keeps piling up, with Max Domi, David Kampf, Dakota Joshua, Morgan Rielly falling into that category, and William Nylander on the bubble.

While I’ll never quite understand Treliving’s love for handing term out to depth players, he’s at least avoided giving them too much term. That means that the Leafs’ core consists of three of their best forwards (Matthew Knies, Nylander and Tavares) and three of their best defensemen (McCabe, Rielly and Chris Tanev). You would want Auston Matthews in that category as well, but Toronto has at least avoided giving big money and term to a piece that shouldn’t belong in that group. Considering all the cap space they started the summer with and the weak free agent pool they had to work with, they could have easily made things a lot worse. So while Mitch Marner’s departure hurts them both on ice and hinders them on this list, the Leafs have kept the door open for long-term improvement if they’re smart.

Letting Mitch Marner walk for nothing was a disappointing waste of one of Toronto’s highest value assets, but in retrospect it had been heading that direction for a while. All things considered, most Leafs fans are probably just grateful he wasn’t re-signed for eight years at $14 million. Between letting Marner go and the Tavares/Knies deals, you’d think there’s a reasonable argument for Toronto to land higher in Maxwell’s ranking. Though he does raise a fair point on the term some of these players are locked in for, namely Rielly and Nylander, who will both be 36 when they hit the end of their contracts. Mind you, considering the cap increases, those contracts will surely look friendlier by the year.

Behind the Leafs from 26th to 32nd place, respectively, are the Minnesota Wild, the San Jose Sharks, the Nashvhille Predators, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the New York Islanders. Outside of the Wild, this portion of the list is mainly occupied by re-building (or soon to be re-building) groups, as Maxwell dutifully notes. Not great company for Toronto at this point in their chase for the Cup. Of course, this is just one man’s opinion and one way of evaluating an NHL roster. In The Athletic’s ranking of contract efficiency published earlier this month, the Leafs landed 15th.

Let’s hear your take, how would you rank the Toronto Maple Leafs in term of league-wide salary cap management?